Pursuit of a Parcel by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page B

anything was to happen?’ So I said, ‘I’m sure I don’t know, Mr. Miller,’ and he said, ‘There’s only one Doris Holt. Take care of her.’ Made me feel all gooey—it did reelly. So then he walked home with me.”
    â€œWho is Mr. Miller?” said Emanuel Holt in a vexed voice.
    Doris giggled. “Reelly, Dad—how you said that! Anyone would think—”
    â€œWell, we haven’t heard of him before, ducks—have we?” said Mrs. Holt.
    Doris giggled again. “Well, you couldn’t have, because I hadn’t heard of him myself, and the best girl ever can’t tell her Mum and Dad what she doesn’t know, can she?”
    â€œYou didn’t let him pick you up, Doris!”
    â€œReelly, Mum! As if I would! And if you want to know, it was Florrie Hicks came up to me just as we were coming out, and she said, ‘There’s a friend of mine wants to meet you.’ And there he was—ever so polite, and quite the gentleman.”
    Mrs. Holt looked at her with a comfortable smile. “And what’s Tom Hale going to say to so much Mr. Miller, ducks?”
    Doris coloured right up to the roots of her very fair hair. She was brilliantly pretty for a moment and her eyes shone.
    â€œWhat’s it got to do with Tom Hale whom I go with? I don’t care if I never see him again! I’m sick and tired of the very sound of his name!”
    Mrs. Holt continued to smile. “All right, ducks. Now what about another cup of tea?”
    The raiders were a little later than usual. Mrs. Holt had finished her washing up with ten minutes to spare before the sirens went wailing overhead. The family then adjourned to the shelter which they shared with the Smithers next door. It was a close fit, but Mr. Smithers, an elderly widower “living retired” as he himself put it, had an ingenious mind and a turn for carpentry. From first to last the shelter had been his peculiar care. Emanuel had merely paid his share of the bill and lent an inefficient hand with the digging. It was Mr. Smithers who had insisted on the extra inches of depth and a corresponding increase in the defensive layer of earth piled overhead. He had also with his own hands constructed bunks, so that each person was enabled to lie down. This had necessitated some careful dovetailing.
    Mr. Smithers, like all artists, was not fully satisfied with the result. He had provided five persons with the means of assuming a recumbent position, but it had not been possible to allow each of them a space of more than five-foot-six by eighteen inches in which to recline. He used to lie in his bunk and meditate upon the possibility of improving upon this arrangement.
    As soon as it was quiet enough to sleep, he slept. When roused by more bombs, he would plunge again in thought. His elderly sister, after plugging her ears with pink cotton wool and tying up her head first in a woollen scarf and then in a waterproof hood, slumbered peacefully irrespective of what might be happening outside. This made them ideal shelter-companions. The only thing was, as Mrs. Holt said, that it was really quite easy to forget that they were there.
    The shelter boasted a small electric bulb. It was Emanuel’s habit to pass the earlier part of the enevning in improving his mind. Having perused with interest some statistics as to the limited number of words contained in the ordinary person’s vocabulary, he was now busily engaged in adding to his own. Opening a dictionary at random, he pursued the unfamiliar word with zest and interest, whilst Rosie knitted and Doris flicked over the pages of a magazine.
    â€œNow, Rosie, here’s one you won’t know, for I didn’t myself. Astonishing where they come across the words. Grave, Rosie—a transitive verb, but not, as you might imagine, the one which means to carve, puncture, or engrave, from the Old English grafan, cognate with groove, but another