Read Online The Other Linding Girl by Mary Burchell - Free Book Online

about some correspondence?” Rachel indicated that she was at his service, and for an hour he dictated—letters and a conference report— clearly and fairly rapidly.
    “Have you got all that?” he enquired at last.
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Don’t say ‘yes’ if you haven’t,” he warned her, rather irritably. ‘Your predecessor was always cheerful about taking down, but singularly at sea when it came to typing back.” “She doesn’t seem to have been very hot on filing either,” Rachel observed mildly, as she inspected a muddled pile of letters and papers. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll do the letters first, so that they’re ready for signature, and then I’ll clear up the filing before I do your report.”
    “Whatever you like,” he said, having apparently decided finally that she was efficient. And he went away, leaving her to her own devices.
    Rachel was indeed efficient, and a steady worker, so that when he came back, just before lunch, all his letters were waiting for signature, and his new secretary was standing in the alcove by the filing cabinets, with an air of considerable absorption.
    He said nothing, but shot her an approving glance, as he sat down at his desk, and for a while there was silence. Then Rachel, who had her back to the room, heard the door open, and a cheerful masculine voice said, “May I come in?”
    “Oh, Denbey, come in. Have you got the lunch-time papers?” There was a barely controlled note of eagerness in the assistant surgeon's voice.
    “Yes. Sister told me you wanted to see what they had to say about the accident, you old ghoul, you!”
    “I just wanted to make, sure there was no—vulgar romancing about it You never know with the papers,” muttered Oliver Mayforth, rather unfairly. “Have you met Miss Linding?” He made a vague gesture in the direction of Rachel’s corner. ‘Miss Linding—Dr. Denbey, our resident physician.”
    Rachel turned and smiled briefly at the resident physician, before returning to her filing.
    “Nothing at all sensational, ” Oliver Mayforth stated, after a minute or two, with some satisfaction. “Just the bare facts.”
    “But you haven’t noticed the star attraction,” countered Dr. Denbey, in the jocular tone which appeared to be characteristic of him “Have a look at the social page ofthe Echo. Splendid picture of you, enjoying yourselflike mad, you dark horse.”
    “Of me?” Oliver Mayforth sounded astonished—and distastefully astonished at that. While Rachel—she hardly knew why—suddenly lost interest in her filing.
    “Well, it’s not intentionally of you,” the resident physician conceded. “‘Miss Floo-Flah, top debutante of the Season, dancing at the Spastics Ball’—or something like that. But there you are too, just left of centre, on the point of kissing your very lovely partner, if I’m not much mistaken. Who is she, for heaven’s sake? Prettiest girl I’ve seen in a long while, and evidently thinks you’re the answer to her prayer. If I hadn’t been coming in with the paper anyway, I’d still have been coming to enquire when the banns are
    being put up. As it is—Oh!”
    The resident physician came to a dead stop, as Rachel advanced slowly from her obscure corner and impinged completely on his notice at last.
    “I say —I’m sorry! That’s the gaffe of the year, isn’t it? You must forgive my nonsense—I often talk that way. Silly habit—only—”
    But Rachel was not really listening to him She was looking down at the newspaper spread out on Oliver Mayforth’s desk. And there they were, both of them, caught ruthlessly by a roving camera, and registered for all time in a moment she would already most willingly have forgotten.
    “How—how idiotic I look!” she exclaimed, angry and embarrassed beyond belief.
    ‘You don’t, you know. You look perfectly charming,” countered Oliver Mayforth unexpectedly. And, leaning back in his chair, he smiled up at her as though, in some odd way,