Ernest ate fruit and cereal, Mabel cereal without fruit. Cherry crumbled toast and upset her tea. Caroline ate nothing at all. The telephone was active.
Maurice answered it the first time, and reported that Cosmo Frith was coming over bag and baggage before lunch.
“He might just as well live here and have done with it.”
“So might any of us for the matter of that,” snapped Cherry.
This was so undeniably true that no one attempted to deny it.
The telephone bell rang again. This time there was a telegram. Richard took it down, laid the message beside Rachel’s plate, and saw her change color. She said,
“Miss Silver will be arriving this afternoon by the five-thirty. I shall have to send Barlow to meet her. It’s my day for Nanny Capper.”
“Who is Miss Silver?” said Cherry, staring.
Rachel hoped she wasn’t sounding nervous. She said,
“I don’t think any of you have met her. She’s a retired governess. Not very exciting, I’m afraid, but I want to have her down here for a bit.”
Cherry pushed back her chair rudely.
“Oh, why not turn the house into a home for the aged and have done with it!” She strolled towards the door with her hands in her pockets, whistling. She was wearing mustard-colored tweeds and a large emerald-green scarf. She stopped just as she was going out of the room, because Maurice was taking another call. He turned with the receiver in his hand.
“Oh! It’s for you. The faithful, or shall we say the unfaithful, Bob.”
Cherry said “Damn!”, and snatched the receiver. With her father and mother watching, she had to keep her face sulkily indifferent while Mr. Robert Hedderwick said in a voice of violent passion,
“Cherry, you’re driving me mad!”
The Wadlows saw her eyebrows lift a little. They heard her say,
“Why?”
The line quivered under the energy with which Mr. Hedderwick told her why. Cherry found it very difficult to go on looking sulky, because this was all most exciting. And gratifying. The fact that Bob Hedderwick was within a few weeks of his marriage to Mildred Ross contributed an added thrill.
“Cherry, I’ve got to see you!”
She said, “All right.”
“Tonight-at the usual place.”
Cherry said, “Well, I don’t know,” and was rewarded by another outburst.
“I tell you I’m going clean off my head! I’ve got to see you and talk it out! You’ve got to come! Say you will!”
Cherry said, “Perhaps,” and rang off.
This was heady stuff for the breakfast table. She had the utmost difficulty in not looking as pleased as she felt. She poured herself out another cup of tea and sipped at it to hide a lurking smile. Meanwhile the telephone bell was ringing again. Richard spoke over his shoulder, his palm against the mouthpiece.
“Personal, private and particular for you, Rachel. G.B. on the line.”
The young people’s complaint about having the telephone in the dining-room came home with force to Rachel as she took the receiver and heard Mr. Gale Brandon say with his agreeable American accent,
“Miss Treherne?”
Of course there was an extension in her bedroom, but it would look so marked if she switched over. No, it wouldn’t do at all. She said,
“Miss Treherne speaking.”
Gale Brandon’s voice became eager.
“Oh, now, Miss Treherne-I wonder if you would do me a favor. I don’t really like to ask you, but I know you’ve got a very kind heart, and if you’ll think that here I am on the wrong side of the Atlantic for getting help from any of my own women folk, well I think that kind heart of yours will urge you very strongly to step into the breach and help me choose my Christmas presents.”
Rachel heard the pleased note in her own voice as she said,
“But it’s much too early. I haven’t even begun to think about mine.”
Gale Brandon’s voice sounded pleased too. She thought, “He’s pleased with himself,” and tried to bang the door on that other thought, “He’s pleased with me.”
He laughed and said, “If I don’t start early I don’t at all. I just stall and quit. Now if you will come into Ledlington with me this morning-I don’t know how much we could do there but we can make a start.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
His voice took a pleading tone.
“I shall be just lost if you won’t. You know, I do lose my head in a store, and I am liable to send a pair of skates to my bedridden Uncle Jacob, or the lastest thing in lipsticks to my Aunt Hephzibah. What I need is guidance. So won’t you just cut out all those things you were going to do and let me call for you in half an hour’s time?”
Several bright thoughts arrived in Rachel’s mind simultaneously. If she went out with Gale Brandon, Ernest and Mabel would not be able to talk to her. Maurice would not be able to talk to her, and she could put off talking to Caroline. She would also avoid Louisa. And she could make quite certain of being out when Mrs. Barber brought Ella Comperton over.
She said with alacrity, “Well, I oughtn’t to, but I will,” and hung up.
Chapter Eleven
Gale Brandon drove a fast car very fast indeed. He said he had come to live at Whincliff because it offered the best selection of roads without any speed limit which he had so far been able to discover. Yet on this particular morning he showed a disposition to dally.
“How many presents do you want to get, and what sort of people are they for? Have you really got an Uncle Jacob and an Aunt Hephzibah?”
He turned his head to smile at her. A big, goodlooking man in the early forties, with a ruddy tan on his skin and a bright dancing something in his eye-zest and humor always, anger sometimes. He said,
“I certainly have, and they’ve got to have presents. Uncle Jacob likes a good crime story, so he’s easy-but Aunt Hephzibah has me beat. She doesn’t read, she doesn’t drink, and she doesn’t smoke. I once gave her a bottle of scent, and it was a near thing whether she cut me out of her will. It’s just a relaxation for her altering her will, so I have to be very careful. Now, Miss Treherne, what makes you look like that?”
She had thought his eye was on the road.
“I think I hate talking about wills,” she said.
“Then we won’t talk about them. Would you say it would be safe to send Aunt Hephzibah a handbag?”
“She’ll have to pay duty on it, won’t she?”
Mr. Brandon looked a good deal cast down.
“Well-if I hadn’t forgot all about the duty! And would she be mad! Didn’t I say I needed guidance? Look what you’ve saved me from already.”
Rachel laughed.
“That’s my horrid practical mind. I’ve had to learn to be practical, you know-it didn’t come naturally. But if you can’t get your presents, why are we going on?”
“Oh, I’ve got friends this side the Atlantic too. I’ll have to let a cousin of mine see about the old folks at home, but there’ll be plenty we can be getting along with this morning. To start off with, there’ll be chocolates and toys for about a dozen children…”
They did the toys and chocolates very successfully, and then sat down and took stock of their purchases over a cup of coffee. Mr. Brandon produced a list.
Gloves for Peggy and Moira. 6½.
Silk stockings for Jane. Half a dozen pairs. 9½.
Handkerchiefs for Irene. Sheer linen. One dozen.
Handbag for Hermione. Dark blue. Initials.
He handed the list over. It continued to the bottom of the page, where there was a large question-mark on a line by itself.
“Now that,” said Mr. Brandon, “is what I wanted to ask you about. All these other things, they’re for the wives and daughters of very good friends of mine over here. I’ve known most of them a long time, and I know just what sort of things they’ll like, and just what sort of things it would be all right for me to give them. But there’s another present I want to give that I’m not so sure about. It’s for a woman, and it’s for a woman I’ve known all her life. I’d like to give her something that’s really worthwhile- something she can wear. But I don’t want to offend her or have her think I’m presuming.”