The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online

Though they both adored sweet things, they rarely ate them because of the additional expense.
    The amount of linen displayed for Aurelia and Alicia staggered them, and after a pleasant hour spent discussing the final choices, Aurelia pressed not one but two hundred pounds into Drusilla’s reluctant hand.
    “No arguments, if you please!” she said, at her most imperious. “Alicia is getting a bargain.”
    “I think, Octavia,” said Drusilla later, after the visitors had driven off in their chauffeured motorcar, “that now we can all afford new dresses for Alicia’s wedding. A lilac crêpe for me, with a beaded bodice and beaded tassels around the overskirt – I have just the right beads put by! Do you remember the ones our dear mother bought to sew onto her new best half-mourning gown just before she passed away? Ideal! And I think you might purchase that powder-blue silk you so admired in Herbert’s material department, don’t you? Missy could tat up some lace insertions for the neck and sleeves – very smart!” Drusilla stopped to ponder, brow furrowed, looking at her dusky daughter. “You’re the really difficult one, Missy. You’re too dark for pale colours, so I think it will have to be...”
    Oh, let it not be brown! prayed Missy. I want a scarlet dress! A lace dress in the sort of red that makes your eyes swim when you look at it, that’s what I want!
    “...brown,” Drusilla finished at last, and sighed. “I understand how disappointing this must be, but the truth of the matter is, Missy, that no other colour becomes you half so well as brown! In pastels you look sick, in black you look jaundiced, in navy you are at death’s door, and the autumn tones turn you into a Red Indian.”
    Missy said not a word, the logic of this being inarguable, and not knowing how much her docility pained Drusilla, who would have welcomed a suggestion at least – though of course scarlet would not have been countenanced under any circumstances. It was the colour of tarts and trollops, fully as much as brown was the colour of the respectable poor.
    However, nothing could keep Drusilla’s spirits oppressed for long tonight, so she cheered up again rapidly. “In fact,” she said happily, “I think we can all have new boots as well. Oh, what a dash we’re going to cut at the wedding!”
    “Shoes,” said Missy suddenly.
    Drusilla looked blank. “ Shoes? ”
    “Not boots, Mother, please! Let us have shoes, pretty dainty shoes with Louis heels and bows on the front.”
    It is possible that Drusilla may have considered the idea, but Missy’s cry from the heart was smothered immediately by Octavia, who, in her invalidish way, did quite a lot of the ruling at the house called Missalonghi.
    “Living all the way out at the end of Gordon Road?” Octavia snorted. “You’re not right in the head, girl! Just how long do you think shoes would last in the dust and the mud? Boots are what we must have, good sturdy boots with good sturdy laces and good sturdy thick heels on them. Boots last ! Shoes are not for those who must go on Shank’s pony.”
    And that was that.
    By the Monday following the visit of Aurelia and Alicia Marshall, life had returned to normal at Missalonghi, so Missy was allowed to take her habitual walk to the lending library in Byron. Of course it wasn’t all selfish pleasure; she went armed with two large shopping bags, one for either hand to balance the load, and she did the week’s marketing as well.
    Quiescent for the week she had stayed at home, the stitch in Missy’s side came back in full force. Odd, that it only seemed to bother her on long walks. And it was painful, so wretchedly painful!
    Today her own purse had joined company with her mother’s, and her mother’s purse was unusually fat, for Missy had been commissioned to buy the lilac crêpe and the powder-blue silk and her own brown satin at Herbert Hurlingford’s clothing emporium.
    Of all the shops in Byron, Missy hated Uncle