Part 9 (2/2)

”I like going to see Granny,” said f.a.n.n.y as Kimber tucked them up together in the car. ”She makes me feel young.”

”You may very well feel it,” said Mr. Waddington. ”It's only my mother's white hair, Miss Madden, that makes her look old.”

”I thought,” said Barbara, ”she looked ever so much younger”--she was going to say, ”than she is”--”than most people's mothers.”

”You will have noticed,” f.a.n.n.y said, ”that my husband is younger than most people.”

Barbara noticed that he had drawn himself up with an offended air, unnaturally straight. He didn't like it, this discussion about ages.

They were running out of the Square when f.a.n.n.y remembered and cried out, ”Oh, stop him, Horatio. We must go back and see if Ralph's coming to dinner.”

But at the White Hart they were told that Mr. Bevan had ”gone to Oxford on his motor-bike” and was not expected to return before ten o'clock.

”Sorry, Barbara.”

”I don't see why you should apologize to Miss Madden, my dear. I've no doubt she can get on very well without him.”

”She may want something rather more exciting than you and me, sometimes.”

”I'm quite happy,” Barbara said.

”Of course you're happy. It isn't everybody who enjoys Ralph Bevan's society. I daresay you're like me; you find him a great hindrance to serious conversation.”

”That's why _I_ enjoy him,” f.a.n.n.y said. ”We'll ask him for to-morrow night.”

Barbara tucked her chin into the collar of her coat. The car was running down Sheep Street into Lower Wyck. She stared out abstractedly at the eastern valley, the delicate green cornfields and pink fallows, the m.u.f.fling of dim trees, all washed in the pale eastern blue, rolling out and up to the blue ridge.

It made her happy to look at it. It made her happy to think of Ralph Bevan coming to-morrow. If it had been to-night it would have been all over in three hours. And something--she was not sure what, but felt that it might be Mr. Waddington--something would have cut in to spoil the happiness of it. But now she had it to think about, and her thoughts were safe. ”What are you thinking about, Barbara?”

”The view,” said Barbara. ”I want to sketch it.”

V

1

Mr. Waddington was in his library, drawing up his prospectus while f.a.n.n.y and Barbara Madden looked on. At f.a.n.n.y's suggestion (he owned magnanimously that it was a good one) he had decided to ”sail in,” as she called it, with the prospectus first, not only before he formed his Committee, but before he held his big meeting. (They had fixed the date of it for that day month, Sat.u.r.day, June the twenty-first.)

”You come before them from the beginning,” she said, ”with something fixed and definite that they can't go back on.” And by signing the prospectus, Horatio Bysshe Waddington, he identified it beyond all contention with himself.

It was at this point that Barbara had blundered.

”Why,” she had said, ”should we go to all that bother and expense? Why can't we send out the original prospectus?”

”My dear Barbara, the original prospectus isn't any good.”

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