Lucia Victrix by E. F. Benson Read Free Book Online Page A

a perfect sketch you could do of that.’
    ‘Heaps of room for us all in the cottage,’ said Georgie. ‘I hope there’s a servants’ sitting-room.’
    ‘They’ll be in and out of Mallards all day,’ said Lucia. ‘A lovely servants’ hall there.’
    ‘If I can get it, I will,’ said Georgie. ‘I shall try to let my house at Riseholme, though I shall take my bibelots away. I’ve often had applications for it in other years. I hope Foljambe will like Tilling. She will make me miserable if she doesn’t. Tepid water, fluff on my clothes.’
    It was time to get back to their inn to unpack, but Georgie longed for one more look at his cottage, and Lucia for one at Mallards. Just as they turned the corner that brought them in sight of these there was thrust out of the window of Miss Mapp’s garden-room a hand that waved a white handkerchief. It might have been samite.
    ‘Georgie, what can that be?’ whispered Lucia. ‘It must be a signal of some sort. Or was it Miss Mapp waving us good night?’
    ‘Not very likely,’ said he. ‘Let’s wait one second.’
    He had hardly spoken when Miss Coles, followed by thebreathless Mrs Plaistow hurried up the three steps leading to the front door of Mallards and entered.
    ‘Diva and quaint Irene,’ said Lucia. ‘It must have been a signal.’
    ‘It might be a coincidence,’ said Georgie. To which puerile suggestion Lucia felt it was not worth while to reply.
    Of course it was a signal and one long prearranged, for it was a matter of the deepest concern to several householders in Tilling, whether Miss Mapp found a tenant for Mallards, and she had promised Diva and quaint Irene to wave a handkerchief from the window of the garden-room at six o’clock precisely, by which hour it was reasonable to suppose that her visitors would have left her. These two ladies, who would be prowling about the street below, on the look-out, would then hasten to hear the best or the worst.
    Their interest in the business was vivid, for if Miss Mapp succeeded in letting Mallards, she had promised to take Diva’s house, Wasters, for two months at eight guineas a week (the house being much smaller) and Diva would take Irene’s house, Taormina (smaller still) at five guineas a week, and Irene would take a four-roomed labourer’s cottage (unnamed) just outside the town at two guineas a week, and the labourer, who, with his family would be harvesting in August and hop-picking in September, would live in some sort of shanty and pay no rent at all. Thus from top to bottom of this ladder of lessors and lessees they all scored, for they all received more than they paid, and all would enjoy the benefit of a change without the worry and expense of travel and hotels. Each of these ladies would wake in the morning in an unfamiliar room, would sit in unaccustomed chairs, read each other’s books (and possibly letters), look at each other’s pictures, imbibe all the stimulus of new surroundings, without the wrench of leaving Tilling at all. No true Tillingite was ever really happy away from her town; foreigners were very queer untrustworthy people, and if you did not like the food it was impossible to engage another cook for an hotel of which you were not the proprietor. Annually in the summer this sort of ladder of house-letting was set up in Tilling and was justly popular. But it all depended on asuccessful letting of Mallards, for if Elizabeth Mapp did not let Mallards, she would not take Diva’s Wasters nor Diva Irene’s Taormina.
    Diva and Irene therefore hurried to the garden-room where they would hear their fate; Irene forging on ahead with that long masculine stride that easily kept pace with Major Benjy’s, the short-legged Diva with that twinkle of feet that was like the scudding of a thrush over the lawn.
    ‘Well, Mapp, what luck?’ asked Irene.
    Miss Mapp waited till Diva had shot in.
    ‘I think I shall tease you both,’ said she playfully with her widest smile.
    ‘Oh, hurry up,’