Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons Read Free Book Online Page A

usual because she was going up to London for a day’s shopping. She enjoyed such excursions more than anything in the world; her only regret was that she had no daughter to enjoy them with her.
    Hetty was no use at shopping. Hetty took no interest, unless Mrs Spring hurried into the book department at Harrods to buy a book of dog and horse pictures, costing 18 s ., for a friend who was keen on dogs and horses. Then, indeed, Hetty could hardly be dragged away. She was a thoroughly sickening girl. ‘Old Het-Up’, Victor called her, because she got so excited over poetry and all that sort of thing.
    Nevertheless, Hetty was going to town today with her aunt because the fine weather seemed to have set in, and a gay, busy summer with many guests, parties and excursions lay ahead of Grassmere, for which its ladies must have the right clothes and plenty of them.
    Mrs Spring compelled herself to relax while she sipped the juice and skimmed the anything-but-relaxing pages of the journal, but she was feeling irritable because Hetty was not there, dressed and ready to start. Hetty had eaten her breakfast and slipped off. She was always slipping off, and it annoyed Mrs Spring very much; she liked to have someone there to ask advice of, and to discuss the day’s plans with.
    Besides, at the last minute Hetty might be missing; that had happened once, and the train had been missed. Even Victor had been very angry with Hetty about that: he could not believe that anyone could actually miss a train. He was not easy-going.
    Today there was plenty of time, but Mrs Spring was uneasy. She rang, and said to the maid who came in, ‘Go and see if Miss Hetty is in her room, and ask her to come down.’
    The girl, a very pretty little thing from Merionethshire, said, ‘Yes, Madam,’ and went out. But she did not go upstairs.
    Victor’s unrelaxing standard of efficiency kept the whole of Grassmere’s interior new and spotless, and the grounds as well. But, like a king whose empire is so vast that he cannot find the time to visit certain squalid tribes on its frontiers, Victor never went into the hinterland of the vegetable garden, a desert of dumps, disused frames, manure heaps and a very large water-butt, originally painted a bright turquoise blue.
    Time and weather had faded this colour to softness, and it now glowed coolly against the canopy of pale red and white blossoms in the little orchard, where the apple-trees were out. The almond-trees were flowering, and the cherry, and the pear in a waterfall of white stars, and the dark pink crab-apple. Hetty sat on three old bricks with her back against the water-butt, a book on her knees, gazing up at the youngest gardener, a comely youth tied up here and there with bast. He was saying:
    ‘You see, Miss Hetty, it’s Mr Spring. He likes to know every single thing as goes in, Mr Spring does.’
    ‘Yes, I know he does, but surely he’d never notice one more cherry-tree among all the others.’
    ‘He’d be sure to see me puttin’ her in, Miss Hetty. ’Sides, it ’ud take me off my reg’lar wuck. Proper lot to do there is, here.’
    ‘I could put it in,’ she said eagerly.
    ‘Not right, you couldn’t, if you’ll excuse me a-sayin’ soo, Miss Hetty. Why, even a doddy tree like that un here,’ he pointed to a little cherry close by, ‘her takes time to put in, an’ it moost be done right. If she ain’t done right, her might die, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?’
    His young voice, in which the colourless vowels taught to him at school were gradually being replaced by the natural broad ones of his county, was soft and kind as though he spoke to a child, but it was also amused. Miss Hetty certainly didn’t goo on like most young ladies, and her differences were funny.
    ‘No, I shouldn’t,’ she answered shortly, turning her head quickly away to look at the fairy cloud of flowers. Her small blue eyes were deeply set and slightly misty from too much reading. They had a