Read Online Wild Geese Overhead by Neil M. Gunn - Free Book Online Page A

go and have some tea.
    He drifted on, straight ahead, and almost collided with Philip Manson, who was standing gaily chatting to a young woman while consulting his small diary.
    â€œPardon——” muttered Will, before the two men recognized each other.
    â€œHal-lo!” Philip all but laughed. “We don’t often barge into each other!” He turned to the girl. “Talk about the devil!” he said. “This is the friend of mine I was telling you about who went to live on a farm.” Will had already seen that the girl was Jenny. “May I introduce Mr. Will Montgomery—Miss Baird.”
    â€œHow d’you do?” said Will pleasantly and naturally as if he had never seen her in his life, then turned to Philip. “I must have been coming along half-dreaming——”
    â€œIt’s his normal condition,” Philip explained. She had flushed slightly, for she had involuntarily been about to recognize Will. “He generally has some strange theory or other—and in argument is more slippery than any eel.”
    â€œSee how cleverly he destroys any argument I might have before I open my mouth? He was always like that.”
    â€œDon’t believe him!” Philip was in good form. “You know the awful sort of person who says something to you, almost negligently—and you’re still wondering about it a week afterwards? That’s him.”
    Miss Baird smiled socially.
    â€œI hope you can imagine him wondering a week afterwards about anything?”
    â€œMy dear fellow,” Philip said, “if I can remember a remark of yours for a week, I trust you can understand that there are other things which might stick in my mind more strongly and possibly even for a longer time.”
    â€œMy dear fellow,” replied Will in the same amusingly artificial tone, “you have hit the nail completely on the head with, if I may be allowed to say so, your usual gallantry.”
    Both men laughed, but the last word just managed to touch Philip on the cheek, and with the interchange of eyeflash, Will conveyed an extra small chuckle of triumph for luck.
    â€œBut I must be off,” Will said. “It’s all very well for you townspeople to dawdle about and enjoy the civilized amenities——”
    â€œQuite!” Philip interrupted. “While you go to assume your arduous duties on your farm. By the way, it is only after you left that I remembered. Wait.… What is your country address?”
    â€œA note to the office is the surest way of getting me. Goodbye.” He smiled to them both, raising his hat; turned and was gone.
    I’m escaping all right! Will thought to himself. Nobody is getting me! Then he drifted along thinking no more, but amused in a vague bright way by the chance meeting. Philip and Jenny were of a kind. Her lips and nails had city paint they hadn’t had in the country—or hadn’t they? She had the brightness in her colouring of—daffodils.
    He sat down at his tea table and looked around the room as if he hadn’t seen it when he came in. Then he had a second look because he had missed the faces after all. There was no one he knew. The waitress came beside him and stood still.
    â€œAnything you can suggest?” He glanced up with a smile.
    Her face was pale and wearied and her smile was wan. Its waxen frailty stabbed his heart with its long-suffering. He dropped his head over the menu card, shutting his teeth, then glanced up with a still pleasanter smile. “A poached egg, please.”
    â€œOne poached egg, thank you.”
    He looked at her dark-clad body as it moved away between the tables. His own body quickened in a spasm of pain.
    â€œThanks,” he said, when she had disposed his food before him. But he did not look at her this time. What right had he to introduce a winning smile, an easy sympathy, a hidden understanding? She asked for nothing. Got it. And kept her