Promise the Doctor by Marjorie Norrell Read Free Book Online Page B

the Misses Barnes had tried in vain to purchase. ‘Do you think we’re on the right track, Pete?’
    ‘Navigation correct, ma’am!’ Pete swung the little car to a halt before a tall, old-fashioned pair of iron gates with the legend ‘Fernbank’ woven into the design as part of the decoration. ‘I should say we’re here.’
    Joy descended from the mini suddenly feeling shy and just a little afraid. After all, whatever Mr. and Mrs. Wrenshaw proved to be as people it seemed she was in honour bound now to be responsible for their welfare, since that was how Miss Barnes had taken the promise she had made to ‘look after my interests...’
    ‘And I will,’ Joy vowed mentally, pulling herself together. ‘I can’t let Miss Barnes down now! Not after she’s put so much trust in me!’
    With Pete closely beside her she walked firmly along the well-kept path to the wide, highly polished front door and pressed the bell. Almost before it had stopped ringing, or so it seemed, the door was opened and a small, round woman, barely reaching to Joy’s shoulder but with a healthy, rosy face beaming with welcome, stood there, holding the door wide open.
    ‘Come in, please do!’ she began at once, her voice crisp and firm and not in the least like Cousin Emma’s often weary-sounding tones. ‘You must be Sister Benyon?’ She looked enquiringly at Joy and then back at Pete. ‘Miss Barnes wrote to us about you, before she was too ill to write much at all, that is. She said you had the kindest and most compassionate face in the whole of her experience, and that a body only had to take a look at you to know their life would be as safe in your hands as it could be anywhere on this earth! And this will be your brother, will it? It ran in my mind that Miss Barnes wrote that he and your sister—one of them—were still at school, but it’s months ago now, and I forget so many things these days!’
    ‘That’s one thing you haven’t forgotten, Mrs. Wrenshaw,’ Joy smiled, her blushes at the unexpected words about herself from the old lady beginning to fade a little. ‘My brother and his twin sister, Sylvia, are both still at school. This is a friend of ours who has lived with the family for a number of years, Pete Bradley,’ she completed the introduction. ‘We shall have to look around Vanmouth and try and find work for him here,’ she ended in a teasing voice. ‘It won’t seem the same home without Pete around!’
    She stopped abruptly, covered in confusion by the look in Pete’s eyes, a look she had never intended to call forth where she and Pete were concerned. Hastily she plunged into talk of the house, details of the furnishings, wondering how much extra furniture the family would need to fill all these rooms, but Mrs. Wrenshaw seemed to sense what was running through her mind.
    ‘There’s more furniture in these rooms than we know what to do with, Miss Benyon, and that’s a fact,’ she said after introducing her husband, a small, neatly built man with snow-white hair and a small, trim white beard, a pair of twinkling blue eyes and the straightest back Joy had ever seen outside a military parade.
    ‘There’s a sight more up in the attics, too,’ he said now. ‘Old Mr. Barnes had a mania for auction sales. Never bought anything of great value once in his life, but always lived in the hope that one day he’d pick up what he called “a collector’s piece” somewhere amongst the rest of it. Most of the stuff is stored up there, but I dare say a lot of it could be put to some good use. There’s a little place in the town where there are two young men who love ... converting things, I think they call it. They’ll be full of ideas.’
    ‘We can talk about that when Mother has looked round,’ Joy said as Mrs. Wrenshaw proudly presented them with a lavish tea, ready laid in the dining-room. ‘At the moment I’m only anxious to change the paper on the walls and the paintwork. It will be a little depressing for