Styx and Stones by Carola Dunn Read Free Book Online Page A

children, and caught Derek sticking his tongue out at Miss Prothero’s retreating back.
    â€œWell, she was rude to me,” he said, catching his aunt’s admonitory frown.
    â€œYes, she was,” Daisy agreed candidly, “but there’s no need to lower yourself to her level. Though, actually, I don’t suppose she realized she was being rude. Her generation had a different view of children.”
    â€œPos-it-ively hu-mil-iating.” Derek was joined by Belinda on the second word. They looked at each other, but gravely, not laughing. “We’re people too,” said Derek.
    â€œOur feelings can be hurt too,” Bel agreed.
    â€œSo can Tinker’s,” Derek claimed, and now they laughed.
    â€œSticks and stones may break my bones,” chanted Bel, and Derek added his voice to the second line: “But words will never harm me.”
    â€œFar less Tinker,” Daisy said with a laugh, “who didn’t even know she was being insulted. And dirty paw-marks wouldn’t have shown on that dress anyway. Come along, you two—you three—we might as well go home. The shop is closed now.”
    â€œRace you, Bel!” said Derek, and off they ran, hurt feelings forgotten.
    Daisy remembered Professor Osborne’s Latin tag. “O quanta species … ” wasn’t it? The way his brother had cut him off with a frown had made her wonder whether it was insulting. When
she reached the house, she asked Johnnie, who hotly denied recalling a word of Latin from his schooldays. He directed her to a dictionary of quotations in the library, which he rather thought might have some scraps of the Classics in it.
    With some difficulty, for it was indexed under species, not quanta, Daisy found it: “O quanta species cerebrum non habet! ” The translation read, “O that such beauty should be so devoid of understanding!”
    Just because she had never been taught any dead languages! Daisy was furious. No wonder Mrs. Osborne disliked her brother-in-law, if she had to put up with such underhanded denigration.
    Words were not always harmless, Daisy thought, whatever the old rhyme asserted.
    Look at Johnnie’s distress over those horrible letters. She was determined to find out who had written them, and she felt she already had a foot in the door. An invitation to morning coffee with Mrs. LeBeau, and acquaintance with the Osbornes and Miss Prothero—not bad going when she had only arrived this afternoon. Surely she could make something of such opportunities.
    The door opened wider that evening, just before dinner, when the vicar’s wife rang up and asked for Daisy. The speaker for the Women’s Institute meeting on Thursday had scratched. Mrs. Osborne wondered whether Miss Dalrymple would be so kind as to stand in. She was sure a lecture on the writing profession would interest members far more than the planned annual lecture on flower-arranging.
    Daisy’s first impulse was to reject the proposal outright. Let Mrs. Osborne organize her husband’s parishioners to her heart’s content; Daisy had no intention of being organized.
    She hesitated, trying to word her refusal politely. Mrs. Osborne, no doubt adept at assuming that silence gave consent,
went on, “That’s settled, then. Excellent! Would you care to come to tea at the Vicarage tomorrow to meet the committee members?”
    Would she ever!
    If anything in the world was guaranteed to be an absolute hotbed of village gossip, a veritable School for Scandal, it was a WI committee meeting combined with a vicarage tea-party.

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    â€œ … A -and this the burden of his song forever seemed to be-ee,” Daisy sang to herself as she went up to her room to put on a hat, “I care for nobody, no not I, and nobody cares for me.” Now why on earth should the Miller of Dee be circling irritatingly in her head?
    Mrs. Burden at the shop, of course, and Miss Prothero’s view of