Read Online Thank Heaven Fasting by E. M. Delafield - Free Book Online Page B

borders—even ducks, carrying umbrellas, or emerging from improbable-looking eggs.
    These copies, carefully and brightly painted with watercolour paint by Monica, adorned her mother’s menucards.
    â€œI don’t mean her to be
idle,
just because she’s ’out,’” Mrs. Ingram always said. “At least one hour at some little job, every day, is one of my rules.”
    â€œI say, did you do those? How awfully clever of you,” cried Mr. Ashe. He was most appreciative and Monica felt, with complete satisfaction, that it wasn’t really the painting he was admiring—he said at once that he knew nothing whatever about Art—but herself.
    They were talking very happily—from Art they had passed on to politics, and Monica had admitted that she often felt inclined to read up Socialism, although it would shock her parents most
dreadfully
if they ever guessed it—when Mrs. Ingram summoned Monica to the other room.
    â€œYou must tell me some more another time,” said Claude Ashe earnestly, as he rose to his feet.
    â€œI expect I’ve been boring you most frightfully, really,” Monica murmured insincerely.
    â€œI’ve simply loved it. You know I have. I only hope
you
haven’t been bored.”
    â€œOh no. I’ve loved it too.”
    Avoiding the young man’s eye, and blushing a good deal, Monica preceded him into the further room.
    There were several other callers there now, and she had no more conversation with Claude, although she was all the time acutely aware of his presence in the room. She could tell by the quick way her mother looked at her, andthen away again, that she was eager to know exactly how the
tête-à-tête
had progressed.
    Sure enough, as soon as the last visitor had gone—Claude went away quite soon, and at a moment when Monica, helping an elderly lady on with her feather boa, could only smile and bow—Mrs. Ingram turned to her daughter.
    â€œHow did you and young Ashe get on, darling?”
    â€œQuite nicely, thank you, mother.”
    â€œI couldn’t leave you chatting alone with him in the back drawing-room any longer. It would have been much too marked.”
    â€œYes, of course.”
    â€œBesides——”
    Mrs. Ingram paused so long that Monica, rather anxiously, ventured to ask:
    â€œBesides what, mother?”
    â€œBesides, though he may be a very nice young man, we’ve got to remember that he isn’t, really, very much use. He’s too young, for one thing, and there’s no money at all, even if he hadn’t got an elder brother.”
    Monica, disconcerted and disappointed, did not quite know how to reply. She was afraid that her mother was going to say that she would not be allowed to be friends with Claude Ashe any more.
    â€œIt’s quite all right, darling,” said Mrs. Ingram very kindly. “I like you to make friends of your own age, and one wants people to see that—well, that there’s someone running after you, more or less. Only I want you to realize that you mustn’t take anything at all seriously, just yet.”
    â€œOh, I won’t, mother,” said Monica, quite relieved.
    â€œIt’s only your first season, after all, and you’re very young. Though I wasn’t much older than you are now when I married.”
    Monica had very often been told that Mrs. Ingram had married at eighteen, and the information always vaguely annoyed her.
    â€œI suppose you must have been very pretty when youwere young,” she said politely, trying not to know too consciously that she was saying something very nasty indeed.
    Imogen Ingram laughed curtly.
    She was not yet forty, and although her complexion had faded, her hair, eyes, and teeth were still beautiful. It was, of course, natural and suitable that she should display ample curves both above and below her tightly corseted waist. Men always preferred a full figure to a skinny