The Partnership by Phyllis Bentley Read Free Book Online Page B

Cromwell Place; Annice in occasional jerky sentences threw out facts about life in the mining district which was her home, and about the management of the Grand Hotel. The soldier she did not mention, and Lydia again did not feel that she could press her on that point; but after some hesitation the elder girl brought out a few moral maxims and cautionary tales which she thought applicable tothat part of Annice’s story. Annice received these in a silence so complete that Lydia thought she must have fallen asleep during their recital, and spoke her name interrogatively. The girl replied at once with her usual serene cheerfulness, and Lydia felt that her previous silence had been an intentional rebuff.
    â€œWe’d better go to sleep now,” she said rather severely. “Good night.”
    â€œGood night,” replied Annice cheerfully in her calm round tones.
    She sounded so completely unconscious of any deficiencies in her behaviour that Lydia sighed and was silent.
    Next morning the pair set out early for Cromwell Place.

III
PROFIT AND LOSS
    1
    â€œThere’s Mr. Wilfred, Miss Lydia,” said Annice with a bright shy smile.
    It was her first evening in the Mellor household; looking raw and pathetic, but somehow very lovable, in the solitary print frock with which her mother had furnished her forth into the world, she leaned against Lydia’s bedroom door and made this announcement with joyous gusto.
    Lydia, on her knees unpacking, looked up, startled. Annice had only just that second made Wilfred’s acquaintance, for he had not, as Lydia had half hoped, come to the station to meet them; he was detained by a customer, explained Eric, who had come instead. Lydia had been conscious of a most unreasonable feeling of disappointment at this substitution, and her annoyance was not diminished by the behaviour of Eric, who gaped silently at Annice all through the short drive up to Cromwell Place, and seemed unable to take his eyes off her for a moment. Annice had behaved with all due decorum, turning her head aside and gazing out of the window with propermaidenly reserve; but Lydia felt that her cousin’s unmannerliness, not to say boorishness, was getting beyond all bounds and needed to be taken thoroughly in hand. Thanks to this incident, however, Annice might be said to be acquainted with Eric, but she was not so in any sense with Wilfred; how was it then that she uttered his name with such an emphatic and significant intonation? Lydia coloured as she gave herself the answer to this question, for it was obvious even to her simplicity that Annice regarded Wilfred as Lydia’s young man; and as she ran downstairs she reflected, in an amusement tinged with alarm, on the bent of Annice’s mind, which had thus at once settled on a possible intimacy between herself and Wilfred as the chief point of interest in its new situation. She was still conscious of the significance of Annice’s having run up a flight of stairs to tell her of Wilfred’s arrival—which certainly nobody had instructed her to do: Wilfred’s visits to number seven were much too frequent for such a formality—when she entered the room and met him.
    Whether it was due to the soldier, or to Annice, or to the sight of the two together, or to the stimulus of Annice’s tone just now, Lydia did not know; but as soon as her eyes rested upon Wilfred her heart gave a quick leap and she was almost sure she loved him. Her colour rose and her candid tones fluttered as she greeted him; and Wilfred, who desired greatly to marry Lydia but feared that she was too superior to condescendto him, was much encouraged. He took her hand, smiled his wide friendly smile, looked at her with his customary air of affectionate admiration, and observed: “Well, Lydia!” in frank cheerful tones, which Lydia now seemed to recognize as the kindest she had ever heard.
    â€œWell, Wilfred!” she returned, rather breathless from