Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons Read Free Book Online Page B

resentful look which never left them except when she saw a book or the name of a writer.
    ‘You see, Heyrick,’ she began again, after a pause, then stopped. Then went on, ‘Do you like music?’
    ‘Don’t know much about it, Miss Hetty.’
    ‘Well, do you know a song called In Summertime on Bredon ?’
    ‘Like this, does it goo?’ and Heyrick broke into beautiful whistle, strong as a blackbird’s.
    ‘That’s it – that’s it! How on earth did you come to know it?’
    ‘On the wireless last night, Miss Hetty. Proper good ’un, that is.’
    ‘And the words – do you remember the words?’
    He grinned widely. ‘Count I never noticed ’em, Miss Hetty.’
    ‘Well, never mind, only they’re very beautiful and the man who wrote them has just died. That’s why I want to plant the cherry-tree, you see. In his memory, sort of.’
    Heyrick nodded, his amused look deepening.
    ‘He was a writer – a poet,’ she explained, hugging her knees and staring up at the starry white waterfall ( The pear stood high and snowed ). ‘A very true poet.’
    ‘Same as Kipling? We larned a piece by Kipling at school. If , it were called. Count I’ve forgotten most of it now.’
    ‘Not a bit like Kipling,’ corrected Hetty, ‘though Kipling’s a marvel. Only he’s out of fashion, they say (dunderheads). Oh well,’ scrambling up ungracefully and dusting her skirt, ‘thanks, Heyrick. It doesn’t matter. It’s not worth the fuss there’d be. Only I thought as a wild cherry, full standard, only costs seven and sixpence, I could just buy one and stick it in somewhere. I might have known I couldn’t … though there’s room enough.’
    ‘There is soo, Miss Hetty,’ said Heyrick with feeling; he was a little lazy.
    Hetty grimly pulled her hat over her resentful eves, and was bending to pick up her expensive handbag from the ground when little Merionethshire came breathlessly round the water-butt.
    ‘Please, Miss Hetty, Madam says will you go in. She wants you.’
    ‘Did she send you out here?’
    Hetty’s tone was alarmed. The water-butt, in the only untidy corner at Grassmere, was her poetry-reading place.
    ‘Indeed no, Miss Hetty, she said to go up to your room, only I thought as you’d most likely be out here, seeing it’s a nice morning and Heyrick said—’
    ‘All right. Thanks,’ Hetty interrupted the flow of lilting Welsh. ‘Don’t tell anyone I come here, will you, please, Davies? It’s nice to be quiet sometimes.’
    ‘Indeed and I won’t, Miss Hetty,’ promised Merionethshire with a trace of condescension but willingly enough, and meant what she said. A secret was a secret, even if it wasn’t about Boys. Any secret was better than none.
    ‘Poor Miss Hetty,’ said Merionethshire when Hetty had gone, turning a flower-like effect of carnation lips, peony cheeks and pansy-dark eyes on Heyrick. ‘She did ought to get married, I think.’
    ‘Count she ain’t the only one,’ and Heyrick loomed down upon little Merionethshire, who disappeared against the corduroys and bast in a storm of squeaks.
    ‘Where did you get to, Hetty?’ fretfully inquired Mrs Spring, pulling on her gloves. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t sneak off like that just when I want to talk to you.’
    ‘Sorry, Aunt Edna.’
    They took their places in the car, which moved off as Mrs Spring began to talk about the day’s programme.
    Hetty sat silent, in the smart coat and skirt chosen by her aunt, which she wore badly. She was a plump girl of a little over twenty, with dark hair worn in an untidy knob, a bad complexion and small, well-formed features that were unexpectedly attractive.
    She was the only daughter of Mrs Spring’s only sister; her father and mother were dead, and she had lived, since she was five, with her aunt and her cousin Victor. She had some hundred pounds a year of her own left to her by her mother, but Mrs Spring did not consider this pittance enough for a girl to live on in virtue and comfort, and had insisted