Read Online The Little Girls by Elizabeth Bowen - Free Book Online Page B

accustomed to enter Applegate had glissaded off something and lay sprawled on the floor. But athominess centred around the hearthrug, on which stood Frank entertaining Sheila, and Sheila svelte in a knitted suit. He balanced a glass of lager, she held on to a gin and tonic.
    Into the room, not yet far from the door, Dinah came to halt—diffidently, one might almost have thought. Bemused, she wore a look of regret, regret at being without her sun-glasses. Slowly she drew one foot up, as though uncertain how much of the floor was hers to stand on. “So where have you been?” Frank asked, in a tone of marked reprobation. Simultaneously Sheila, with aplomb, nitched her glass on the chimneypiece, uttered a fearless laugh, and swung right round, extending a hand. “Why, Diana,” she chanted, “isn’t this fun!”
    “It’s not you, is it?”
    “Oh dear, am I a shock? It’s been such years, hasn’t it?”
    Frank, with an emphatic roll of the eyes, said: “Mrs. Artworth has had a rocky journey, you’ll be sorry to hear.”
    “It’s not that, so much,” said the traveller pluckily. “But I am in a way knocked rather all in a heap—after all these years, Diana just walking in! And looking marvellous, Diana, all things considered. I honestly don’t think I should have known you.”
    “I’m no longer ‘Diana.’”
    “Oh? Such a pretty name, I remember my mother thought.”
    “Mine didn’t; she hated that bristly goddess. Cousin Roland bullied her into it.”
    “Not your father?”
    “Oh, no.”
    “We are ‘Dinah,’ now,” Frank told Sheila.
    “You spoke of her as that, yes. I supposed it might just be a pet name.—Well, there you are: I am knocked all in a heap!”
    “Weren’t you,” Dinah inquired, not only reasonably but with milky mildness, “expecting me here, though, surely, sooner or later?”
    “You were,” asked the other swiftly, “expecting me ?”
    “Well, no. I regretfully wrote you off. But life”—Dinah turned, now, upon Frank a gaze rendered ethereal by pure fury—”is full of surprises. Today especially. So you didn’t feel up to London, Francis tells me?”
    “Not when it came to the point, m’dear, no. No. Bit off colour this morning. In no right mood for viewing the kid.”
    “That poor, poor little unwanted baby!”
    Sheila, during the combat, had snatched her glass back and polished off the contents. Now, picture of tact, she looked down her pretty nose, of which the tip was becoming pink. Tact went for nothing, unobserved: she abandoned it and let out a crowing titter. “Who’s had a baby, I long to know?”
    “Merely,” said Dinah, seething, “his only daughter.”
    “Major Wilkins’s? Oh.”
    “As you are here, Frank, do look at poor Sheikie’s glass. Bone empty. And after driving such miles, I should rather like … Well, Sheikie, it’s fun you’re here, as you truly say, so let’s let bygones be bygones. You were mysterious, rather, a bit, though, weren’t you?”
    “Fearful, have I been?” wondered Mrs. Artworth. “I truly did not know, up to the very last, whether I could pull out. One’s so tied up, isn’t one? One thing if not another. I actually was not sure till this very morning. I fully intended to phone or send you a telegram, but when it came to the point was in such a whirl, also knew you were bound to be here, on account of Mumbo.—And by the way, that is the first thing I meant to ask: where has she, now, vanished to? Not a sign of her anywhere on that train. Up and down, down and up I went, searching, searching. The ticket collector thought me rather peculiar. On top of which, I’d had to leave home at cockcrow. Southstone to right down here, in the same morning!”
    “Very game of you,” said Frank, bringing back her glass.
    “Not another ? I wonder whether I ought to.” The doubt resolved itself. “Such luck,” Mrs. Artworth continued, “that I happened to have your address with me! You see, you’d said Mumbo’d know