Read Online The Eye of Love by Margery Sharp - Free Book Online Page B

shopping-expeditions, when fat old Beatrice flagged. Miranda’s trousseau, promised Mrs Gibson, would be something in the old style—three dozen of each, also monogrammed! “In the depression, does it look so good?” objected Harry censoriously. “All is British, even to the brassieres!” swore his mater. “It is praised already, at all the stores, how we buy only British!”
    From the smaller shops, especially where she knew the management, she often came away with a little something for herself. A pair of gloves, a pair of stockings, once a nice embroidered blouse—there was no refusing them, when the shop-people were so kind! Even a box of handkerchiefs she didn’t turn up her nose at, but added complacently to the growing pile of loot. “One would think I was starting a trousseau for myself!” cried old Mrs Gibson happily. “One would think it was I going to be a bride!”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    1
    The child Martha also was happy, but she wasn’t being much comfort to Dolores.
    It was a failure of sympathy. June passed into July, July wore on to August, and never once did Martha forget Miss Diver’s early cup of tea. She could easily fit in any piece of routine. But whereas to Dolores the little house, though still a refuge, without Mr Gibson’s daily visits was also a desert, if anyone had asked Martha what difference his absence made, she would have replied, in the food.
    More precisely—and food was one of the only two subjects Martha ever was precise about—kippers instead of chops. On bread and margarine and kippers, and other such low-priced comestibles, she and Dolores now largely subsisted. Martha didn’t particularly mind. She liked kippers. She would simply have been giving a straight answer to a straight question—and arguing post hoc ergo propter hoc . Mr Gibson’s rôle had never been clear to her economically, otherwise she would have missed him more.
    â€œI don’t believe you miss him at all!” cried Dolores bitterly.
    â€œMiss who?” asked Martha. Another failure of sympathy. To Dolores the masculine pronoun had only one reference; to Martha it might mean anyone from Mr Punshon to the milkman.
    She was also, at the moment of Miss Diver’s outburst, occupied in trying to draw a saucepan hanging on the kitchen wall. It was unexpectedly difficult. Martha had never tried to draw anything, before her encounter with Indian ink; now every old envelope bore her blots. She didn’t draw landscapes. The hard outline Indian ink so satisfyingly produced had alerted her eye instead to small, hard-outlined objects—like saucepans. The trouble with Indian ink was that it was too final. Martha had in fact started off in the wrong medium. This naturally had to dawn on her at some point, and it happened to dawn on her then. “Can I have the laundry-book pencil?” asked Martha. “Miss who?”
    If Dolores didn’t tell her, how could she guess? But Miss Diver didn’t even answer about the pencil, but instead, with extraordinary irrelevance, cried that Martha hadn’t even been able to thread beads.
    â€œI didn’t want to. It was silly,” explained Martha, surprised but patient.
    â€œAnd why shouldn’t you sometimes do something you don’t want to? If you’d looked sweet, if you … if you’d twined yourself about his heart,” reproached Dolores passionately, “who knows?”
    Martha suddenly perceived that the whole shape of the saucepan, foreshortened pan-part and straight handle, fitted into another, invisible shape: a long oval. It was a very happy moment.
    â€œYou’re not even listening!” cried Miss Diver.
    â€œYes, I am. Who knows what?” asked Martha. “Can I—?”
    Miss Diver flung down pencil and laundry-book together and retreated to the sitting-room in tears.
    More and more of their conversation ended thus