The Innocents by Margery Sharp Read Free Book Online Page B

me.) But what was a patronymic to Antoinette? I quite rejoiced that it meant nothing, and that of her own accord, and even in my absence, she had accepted a stranger as not necessarily menacing …
    Janet Guthrie was of course not a complete stranger to myself. She was the young woman I’d sat beside at Tam’s funeral, and I recognized her at once. Now she was taking a holiday in Suffolk, on foot, with a rucksack, rubbing brasses. It didn’t surprise me. Obviously all Guthries—as indeed all Scots—were gluttons for education, so that even a holiday had to have its cultural aspect: a rucksack equating the traditional bag of oatmeal. However when I warned that our own church had no brasses of interest at all, she pleased me very much by saying she knew it, but had thought she’d pay me a call.
    â€œI looked for you after the funeral,” said I, “but you’d vanished.”
    â€œI saw you talking to the Rab Guthries,” said Janet. “They’re the rich Guthries, like Tam; we’re the poor ones.”
    Since she seemed to regard this as sufficient and total explanation I didn’t press the point—but what a complicated clannishness the words revealed! From her tone they might have fought on opposite sides at Flodden. I remembered also there’d been no mention of a Janet Guthrie in Tam’s Will; still he’d put her through Veterinary College; so she came to his funeral …
    All this time Antoinette sat cheerful and placid, actually upon, and digging her heels into, the rucksack; and as it suddenly occurred to me that she and our visitor were, however tenuously, blood-related, I identified her to Miss Guthrie as Rab and Cecilia’s daughter Antoinette, and explained how it came about she was living with me in Suffolk.
    â€œI hope I’m not making her shy?” said Janet. “So far she hasn’t said a word.”
    Quite with an air of putting her oar in, “Vermin, tureen,” pronounced Antoinette.
    â€œNow you’ve heard her whole vocabulary,” said I.
    Janet took this with such calm, I wondered whether she’d perhaps known another child like Antoinette; but if she had she didn’t say so, and with good manners I appreciated let the matter rest.
    Over the table—for of course I kept her to lunch—we had a most interesting conversation about her work as a vet, and the small house she’d found to live in just as independently as I did in mine, though even more quietly; for her practice was in the wilds of Caithness, where it was well to have bees to tell any news to, said Janet, if you wanted to keep the use of your tongue! But she was obviously flourishing there; admittedly with so many men away it had been comparatively easy to set up; and at first there’d been some slight anti-female prejudice. “But I wore it down!” said Janet cheerfully. “It took me a year or so, but I wore it down!”—and now she felt quite established.
    I liked Janet Guthrie very much, and told her that whenever she was in Suffolk again she must come and have another meal with me. At that she suddenly cocked a sandy eyebrow and grinned.
    â€œTo be truthful, a meal was what I had in mind!” said she.
    I didn’t blame her, even, or because, she’d accounted for the best part of a boiling-fowl. I was still sorry when she went.—I particularly appreciated her behaviour over the incident of the rucksack. We had left it in the garden; Antoinette, allowed to get down before coffee, over which Janet and I chatted on a little, had emptied everything out and got inside herself. Janet Guthrie gently yet firmly (as she might have handled a young beast) hauled her out by the scruff and then patiently repacked a pair of pajamas, three or four pairs of socks, a textbook on diseases in cattle, a sponge-bag, a light mackintosh, a writing-pad and a first aid kit.
    I was sorry to see her go, and even sorrier