Village Centenary by Miss Read Read Free Book Online

plodding morosely round the vegetable patch when I returned. It was unlike him to look so depressed. Could it be the state of my garden? I had been thinking that it looked unusually tidy. Not that it could hold a candle to Mr Willet's own plot, which was always a miracle of neatness and fertility, but not at all bad by my lowly standards.
    'See you this evening then,' I said to the pacing figure.
    'Any time suits me.'
    'Ah!' answered Mr Willet absently, kicking a stone from the grass on to the garden bed. 'I tell you, Miss Read, that skylight was
right
for that roof. The Hurleys would've known, and I'll wager old Reg don't. It's not going to be as simple as they makes out.'
    So it was the skylight that was casting this unaccustomed gloom upon Mr Willet! I felt mightily relieved.
    'Well, cheer up,' I said, making my way towards the playground. 'That's Reg's look-out, isn't it?'
    'It'll be mine before the pesky thing's been up a month or two,' forecast my caretaker. 'I'm the mug as always has to clear up other folk's mess!'
    As he was still eyeing my weeds, I forebore to comment, but carried my Greek myths across to school in prudent silence.

    News of Joan Benson's departure from Holly Lodge was very soon common gossip in the village, as Miriam had forecast.
    The first to tell me was the vicar. 'A grievous loss!' he said. 'We were all so delighted when she and her husband and mother arrived, but now we must lose the last of the three. I wonder when she is moving?'
    I was unable to tell him, but Mrs Pringle told me an hour or two later.
    'Getting down to her daughter's as soon as she can,' she informed me. 'Going to look out for a little place down there. A bungalow, I don't doubt. Stairs get somethin' cruel as you get on, and she's got a touch of arthritis already.'
    I said, somewhat shortly, that it was the first I had heard of it.
    Mrs Pringle continued undismayed: 'Holly Lodge ought to fetch a good price on the market. Nice garden and that, and you can call your soul your own with that holly hedge all round. Don't get no busybodies peering in like I do at home.'
    This was a side swipe at her immediate neighbour, and I was careful to make no comment. It would soon have got back in Fairacre, and I do my best to steer a steady course.
    'I wonder what Miss Quinn will do?' was her next surmise. 'She won't find it easy to find as quiet a place as that little flat of hers, and I don't suppose she earns enough to buy anything outright, do you?'
    'I have no knowledge of Miss Quinn's income nor of her future plans,' I said stiffly. Was there no way of stopping this gossip? Evidently not, for the lady continued.
    'That little hovel near Miss Waters is in
The Caxley Chronicle
this week for thirty thousand pounds. I ask you! Who'd buy that shack anyway? I can remember when old Perce Tilling bought it for three hundred pounds, and then we told him a fool and his money was soon parted. Not that Perce cared. He'd just won a packet at Caxley races, and his old auntie who kept the shop at Beech Green had just died, and they found over four hundred under the mattress when they lifted her into her coffin, so Perce got that as well. Not fair really, as that daughter of hers, although no better than she should be when it came to American soldiers, did do her best by her mum, and kept her lovely and clean, right to the end.'
    'You got a minute?' shouted Mr Willet from the door. Once again he was my saviour, and I escaped thankfully from Mrs Pringle's reminiscences.

    Within the week I had been told by Mr Lamb at the post office that it was a great shame Mrs Benson had got to give up. The place was too big for her, no doubt, now her husband and mother were dead. Still, it should fetch a tidy sum these days. He reckoned anything between thirty and forty thousand.
    The butcher, cleaving lamb chops, told me between hacks that it was a pity Mrs Benson's daughter was in trouble of some sort, and such a nice old lady had got to sell up and go to help. On