The Making of a Prig. Evelyn Sharp

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СКАЧАТЬ about him once, and I want to show you something. You will come, Ted, won't you?"

      She flung her arms round him in her impulsive way, and gave him one of her rough, playful hugs. But for the first time in his life, Ted shook her off stiffly, and hastened on.

      "What's the matter?" asked Katharine, more perplexed than annoyed.

      "Oh, all right; I'll come. Don't be a fool, Kitty!" he jerked over his shoulder; and she turned away, only half satisfied, and went slowly into the house. It was characteristic of her that the smallest lack of response from some one else would change her mood immediately; and when she entered the dining-room a few minutes later, her vivacity was all gone, and the first words she caught of the conversation at the breakfast-table only helped to irritate her still further.

      "Oh, bother Mr. Wilton!" she said crossly. "The whole house seems to have gone mad over Mr. Wilton. I am tired of hearing his name."

      The Rector seemed unconscious of her remark, and only pulled her hair softly as she slipped into the chair beside him. But Miss Esther stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and cast a meaning glance towards Katharine which her father did not see, though she of course did.

      "My dear," said Mr. Austen, in reply to his sister, "I am sure you are quite competent to do it. Nancy always said you were a born nurse; and Nancy knew, bless her! Besides, the poor young man has been sent to us in his affliction, and there is nothing else to be done, is there? My child, it will not interest you; we were only saying that Mr.—Wilton, is it?—would require careful nursing; and your aunt—"

      "Really, Katharine, there is no necessity for you to interfere. You know too much as it is, and this question is not one that concerns you at all. Perhaps you will keep to the matter in hand until it is settled, Cyril!"

      "My dear, I thought it was settled," said the old man mildly. "The poor young fellow has to be nursed, and you are the best person to do it. So there is nothing else, is there, Esther, that need detain me? I am rather anxious—that is, I would like to finish my paper on the antiquities of the county, and it is already ten minutes past—"

      "It is a most extraordinary thing," interrupted Miss Esther irritably, "that you never will give your attention to anything that really matters. You totally misunderstand my meaning, Cyril. How can I, your sister and a single woman, with due propriety—Katharine, you can go and feed the chickens."

      Katharine did not move, and the Rector got up from his chair.

      "My dear," he remonstrated, "I think you over-estimate the difficulty. It is the duty of the woman to look after the sufferer, is it not? I really think there is nothing more to be said about it. Meanwhile—"

      "I don't know why you are in such a hurry, Cyril; it is the day for the library to be cleaned, so you cannot use it yet. The whole business is most inopportune; why should he break his leg in Ivingdon, when he might have done it quite conveniently in the county town, and been taken to the infirmary like any one else?"

      The Rector wondered vaguely why his room was cleaned more than once a week; but he sat down again and folded his hands, and said that he was of the same opinion as before and saw no reason why the unfortunate young man should not be nursed by Miss Esther.

      "No more do I," said Katharine. "What's the difference between nursing Shepherd Horne through bronchitis and nursing Mr. Wilton with a broken leg, except that Mr. Wilton is presumably not so unwashed? I never can see why the poor people should have the monopoly of impropriety, as well as of the Scriptures. Besides, you can easily reduce him to the level of a villager by reading the Psalms to him every day. That would make you feel quite proper, wouldn't it, auntie? And I dare say he wouldn't mind it much, when he got used to it."

      "Your profanity," said her aunt severely, "is becoming perfectly outrageous. If you were sometimes to say a few words of reproof to your own daughter, Cyril, instead of dreaming your life away—but there, I must go and look after poor Mr. Wilton! I wonder whether he likes his eggs boiled or scrambled?" she added doubtfully. For Miss Esther was one of those women who reserve the best side of their nature for the people who have no real claim upon them; and she took little interest in any one who was neither poor nor afflicted. The unpractical temperament of the Rector both astonished and chafed her, and she had nothing but a fretful endurance for her high-spirited niece, in whom a natural longing for action and an inordinate sense of humour were fast producing a spirit of revolt and cynicism. But an invalid, who was thus thrown suddenly into her power, appealed strongly to the Rector's sister; and her diffidence had entirely disappeared by the time she had gone through all the objections that propriety impelled her to raise.

      "I feel quite thankful," she said, smiling blandly, "that the poor fellow has fallen into such good hands."

      "So do I," remarked Katharine, as the door closed. "It will be all the better for your paper on the local antiquities, won't it, daddy? Daddy dear, just think of all the time we shall have to ourselves, now that she's got Mr. Wilton on her hands! Poor Mr. Wilton! Let's come and clear Dorcas out of the library and look at what you've done, shall we? Come along, daddy, quick!"

      The Rector stroked her long hair, with a doubtful look on his face.

      "I am afraid, Kitty, I do not look after you as I should," he said. "I am a bad old sinner, eh?"

      "That's why I love you so. You are a brick!" exclaimed Katharine.

      And she dragged him impetuously out of the room.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      Meanwhile, Paul Wilton lay wearily in the old-fashioned guest-room over the porch. The pain of his broken limb had kept him awake most of the night; and now that the suffering was less the discomfort remained, and he felt no more inclined to sleep than before. With a kind of mechanical interest he had watched the pale light on his striped blind grow deep and red, and then again pale and bright, as the sun came up over the hills. His restlessness increased as the time wore on; the sensation of being unable to move began to grate on his nerves, and he wished impatiently that something would break the stillness of the house, and awaken the people in it who were sleeping so unreasonably. He raised himself on his elbow as a light step came along the passage outside, and sank back again with a feeling of disappointment when it passed his door, and went downstairs into the garden. In reality it was much earlier than he thought; and it was still some time longer before the usual early morning sounds testified to the existence of a maid. He heard the stairs being swept, and suffered silently as the broom was struck clumsily against his wall in its downward course. Then the front door, was unbolted with a good deal of noise, and a few mats were banged together in the open air, and something was done with the door scraper. A conversation, held across the lawn with Jim, had the effect of an altercation, though it was in reality only an inquiry on the subject of milk, shouted shrilly in broad dialect. Later on, came the welcome crackle of a fire and the clatter of teacups; and a smell of hot bacon began to pervade the air.

      "At all events, that means breakfast," muttered Paul. "It is not to be hoped that it will be worth eating, but at least it will bring a human being into the room. I wonder why ordinary people never have any ideas for breakfast beyond hot bacon! It is sure to be in thick chunks, too, and salt, oh, very salt! Don't I know it? It recalls my childhood. There will be eggs, too—there always were eggs when we had visitors; and bad coffee made by unaccustomed hands, also because there is a visitor. I know that coffee too. On the whole, it is wiser to keep to tea in strange places of this sort, although one knows beforehand that it СКАЧАТЬ