Martha in Paris by Margery Sharp Read Free Book Online Page B

important air.
    â€œI’m terribly sorry,” he said at once, “but Mother isn’t here. She had a wire from London, her father’s terribly ill, and she left straight away. I’m terribly sorry, Martha—”
    â€œI am too,” said Martha. “Isn’t there anything to eat?”
    â€œWell, of course she left my breakfast,” said Eric, looking slightly hurt. He had expected Martha to be more sympathetic; at least more interested. In Taylor circles a serious illness rated as a highly interesting event. “She said—and I do think it was pretty wonderful, in the circumstances—that if you came, I’d better take you out somewhere.”
    Martha reflected. She had never in fact had a meal in a French restaurant; but the prospect, instead of pleasing and exciting, rather upset her. She was tired, also there was the question of her bath. Eric’s breakfast meant bacon and eggs; after a long day’s work she was perfectly willing to settle for eggs and bacon—or even if Eric wanted all the bacon for himself (a point of view with which Martha did sympathize), she could have an omelette …
    â€œThank you very much, but can’t I just have an omelette?” suggested Martha. “You can get it ready while I’m in the bath.”
    To her surprise, Eric hesitated.—Martha knew he could make omelettes, Mrs. Taylor had often told her what a light hand he had with them; why then should he look so dubious? But it seemed as though there was something other than omelettes on Eric’s mind.
    â€œAs Mother isn’t here, perhaps you’d better not have a bath at all,” offered Eric uncertainly, and keeping his position in the doorway. “I mean, as Mother isn’t here …”
    Martha was surprised again.
    â€œDid she say I couldn’t have a bath?”
    â€œWith a father practically dying, I don’t suppose she thought about it,” said Eric reproachfully.
    â€œThen she might have said I could,” argued Martha.
    Eric, rightly trusting to his own instinct, was pretty certain his mother would have said nothing of the sort. He was indeed mentally at one with her on the point.—Yet how to present, to Martha’s lovable innocence, the idea that young girls simply didn’t, shouldn’t, take baths alone in flats with young men? Eric couldn’t think. The situation was beyond him.
    â€œI don’t see anything wrong about it,” argued Martha.
    â€œWell, of course not wrong —” admitted Eric.
    â€œThen I’ll have it straight away,” said Martha—pushing past him with her nosegay in its paper frill and her customary packet of one clean vest and a pair of clean knickers.
    4
    Few sounds combine more reassuringly than those of running bathwater and eggs being beaten. Ten minutes later, Eric, in the kitchen, had begun thoroughly to enjoy the prospect of a domestic picnic. (Martha, in the bath, enjoying at last a proper lie-down-and-soak, was practically comatose.) Indeed, such was Eric’s enthusiasm he had everything ready far too soon; and such his impatience that when ten minutes more had elapsed he went and knocked at the bathroom door. “I’m out!” called back Martha automatically—just as she’d been used to call to her Aunt Dolores; but as soon as his footsteps retreated turned on the hot again. A hotter tide lapped her chin even as Eric heated the pan; curled absolutely around her ears as he tipped in the eggs.—Only a second, a more urgent, an almost desperate knocking got Martha truly out at last.
    5
    As her Aunt Dolores knew, Martha never looked so well as immediately after a hot bath. The French had a word for it: appetizing. Fresh from a hot bath Martha looked as rosy and solid and wholesome—and as appetizing—as a ripe apple. This was all the more apparent, as she cannoned off Eric in the corridor, since she’d just jumped out