The Little Girls by Elizabeth Bowen Read Free Book Online Page B

deeply. “Insinuations—malicious, insidious, mischievous, damaging.”
    “Golly, you’ve got that pat!”
    “She so words those things that anyone could think anything. And if that weren’t enough, there may well be worse at the back—Trevor considers the tone is distinctly menacing. Not blackmail yet, but that is what it could come to. Incidentally, how do we know that she’s not a gang?”
    “How, indeed?”
    “Have you no character, Clare, that you don’t want injured?—or professional capacity, or something? I repeat, I’m exceedingly sorry I’ve never heard of you. You do something, do you—what do you do, then? Or if you prefer it the other way, what are you?”
    At once, Clare’s expression became uplifted. She looked round her at the emptying tables like a big speaker deprecating a small audience. The eyes she at length returned to her friend were dedicated and abstract—not, it seemed, to be focussed merely on one face. “I am MOPSIE PYE,” she made known.
    “Mopsie what?”
    “You heard me,” said the celebrity, severely.
    Sheila could not forbear to giggle: her roses tottered. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
    “MOPSIE PYE chain of specialty gift shops operates throughout the better-class London suburbs and outward into the Home Counties. When it extends to the coast, you will soon know. I started, have a controlling interest in, buy for, and operate MOPSIE PYE.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yes..
    “Did that brooch,” Sheila asked swiftly, “come out of stock?”
    Clare nodded. “Goes back tomorrow.”
    “I wouldn’t mind taking it off you, for cash down. How much?”
    “Nope, dear. Not out of hours. What a jackdaw you are, Sheikie, always were!”
    “You do really run some quite nice lines, then, at Mopsie Pye,” Mrs. Artworth conceded, though not in the best of humours, frustratedly closing the purse she had whipped out.
    “Swedish, Spanish, Finnish, Italian, Provengal, Japanese, and Javanese novelties, and others. Driftwood, primitive art. Witch balls, wind harps. Neckwear, place mats, personalized dog dishes, book ends, saris, door knockers, goat rugs—”
    “Yes, I expect so. But stop it: listen! How many people know you are Mopsie Pye?”
    “Oh, I show up sooner or later at all my branches. Always have made a great point of that. Personality. Hare round and round in the Mini, six days a week. How am I to count my enormous public?”
    “Most people,” persisted Sheila, “do know, then, that ‘Mopsie Pye’ is Clare Burkin-Jones?”
    “Everyone who is anyone. What about it?”
    “That is what I’ve been wondering,” said Mrs. Artworth, not only slowly but in her most ominous tone yet. “What about it? You don’t think widely spread innuendo and menacing hints and allusions to secret rites, not to speak of threats to expose your past, will in any way blow upon Mopsie Pye? If you don’t you’re an optimist, let me tell you. Don’t tell me scandal is good for business! And least of all in your line, I should have thought. No one can tell me anything about gift shops: we have seven in Southstone alone, to my certain knowledge. To me they are sissy, but they’re respectable—and ever, ever so their clientele are! Dizzying round with joss sticks and Swedish pepper pots far, far from means their customers are abnormal: quite the reverse. It’s respectable people who need to have fancy outlets… . No, do look, Clare! These days there are so constantly being such revelations, one can hardly wonder at everyone’s being nervous. Spy rings, dope rings, art-thief rings, white-slave rings, Black Mass rallies (or whatever they call them), and of course always naturally Communists. A gift shop, so mixed up with foreign trade, could be cover for any of those, if you come to think— and a chain of gift shops, ever so much more so! You don’t care if everyone’s frightened off?—However, that’s your worry: I’m merely telling you.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You hadn’t