Read Online Mine for a Day by Mary Burchell - Free Book Online Page A

you—explain to the doctor, please, Mr. Brogner,” Leila said. “There’s no point in his not knowing now.”
    Mr. Brogner inclined his head solemnly, but she felt that he was mentally counting up the number of people who now knew about the whole horrid affair. And when he added: “I will write to you from the office,” she felt she could almost see the opening sentence: “After full consideration of the unfortunate position, I very much regret, etc.”
    The moment the door had closed on them, Si m on turned to her and exclaimed:
    “Good lord! What really happened?”
    “Everything.” Leila laughed a little shakily, and sat down on a hall seat, while Simon stood over her with an air of anxious sympathy which comforted her much for the last half-hour. “Aunt Hester telephoned, just as I was managing not too badly with Mr. Brogner and Frances brought me the message.”
    “But how did she know it was you? She thought you were Rosemary.”
    “Yes, but—don’t you see?—Aunt Hester asked for Miss Lorne , and of course Frances thought she was enquiring for her daughter, forgetting to use her new, married name. I couldn’t just say flatly that I wasn’t the daughter, after all. I had to take the call, and Frances and Mr. Brogner were hovering a bit aimlessly in the background and heard everything. Naturally Aunt Hester knew my voice as soon as I replied—”
    “But how had she known you were here—suspected you were here, I mean? What first made her telephone?”
    “Oh—Miss Parker told her about seeing us.”
    “Miss Parker?” It was Simon’s turn to pass a bewildered hand over his ha i r.
    Leila explained carefully about Miss Parker having seen them at the Junction. And Simon made a slight grimace and said:
    “This is where you’re entitled to say ‘I told you so.’ Because you did suggest that it was unwise to meet so near home.”
    “Did I? Never mind. It was bad luck. You might just as well have been right.”
    He didn’t say anything to that, and she was so busy about another line of thought that she missed the curious, approving glance he gave her.
    “Simon, I had no idea that Frances would react in that extraordinary way.”
    “Oh—that!” He shrugged impatiently. “She’s a completely unpredictable person. That’s why I wouldn’t agree to our telling her in the beginning. It’s a sort of exhibitionism with her, you know.”
    “Well, if she’s working herself up into reproachful hysterics, perhaps we had better go and talk to her,” Leila said with a sigh. “She doesn’t look that sort at all.”
    He laughed ruefully.
    “She has always been the same. Emotional and inclined to take everything in a ridiculously personal manner. I’m not as patient and careful with her as I might be, I know,” he added, with almost boyish frankness and regret. “But she makes me crawl with embarrassment and irritation when she throws one of these scenes.”
    Leila glanced at him not without sympathy, but she said, in a brisk and matter-of-fact tone:
    “One can’t afford to feel that way about one’s own. You’d better call on all your reserves of sympathy right now.”
    “All right,” he replied, with unexpected docility, and they went in search of Frances.
    They found her standing near the window in the back drawingroom, staring out tragically into the garden, and pulling nervously at the comer of the handkerchief she was holding.
    “There is no need for you to upset yourself like this, Frances,” her brother began, in a tone from which he had managed to banish all impatience, but most other feeling, too. “Leila and I were thinking only of Mother’s good, and I know that’s your chief concern, too.”
    “ I would have died rather than deceive Mother,” replied Frances, in a tone of dark reproach.
    “But it is more helpful to ensure that she lives, at the expense of a little deception,” replied her brother dryly. “Don’t be silly, Frances. This isn’t an occasion for