Something Light Read Online Free Page A

him with natural interest. Her memory had been generally accurate: like a Sealyham he was broad through the chest and rather short-legged, but though not tall he was at least as tall as she was (and she could always wear flat heels), and his graying hair had exactly the springy roughness of a Sealyham’s coat. (Louisa could easily imagine herself dropping a kiss on it at the breakfast table.) In age she judged him about nine—or rather sixty—and though she could have wished him younger, he looked fit as a fiddle.
    â€œMy dear Louisa,” exclaimed F. Pennon, “how good of you to be so prompt!”
    He had her hand even before the manservant stepped back, clasping it enthusiastically between his own.—Where now was his reserve, his peculiar stiffness of address? All swept away, thought Louisa happily, in the joy of seeing her again!
    â€œIt’s a pleasure,” said Louisa sincerely.
    Indeed it was, to see him not only so spry and so delighted, but also, quite obviously, nervous. (He was far more nervous than Louisa; but then she already knew his fate.) He fussed. He fussed over finding her the most comfortable chair, and over the disposition of the tea things. (There were the scones, there was the honey, also a plummy cake shaped like an Edwardian toque.) He asked her to pour out. The weight of the teapot almost sprained her wrist, but how gladly she bore the slight twinge! “Family plate,” thought Louisa—for not even Gladstone Mansions would supply solid silver. The sugar bowl alone could have been pawned for thirty bob. (How different a cup of char with Mr. Ross!) Merely to handle the solid silver sugar tongs, good for at least half a guinea, Louisa took three lumps.
    â€œThis is just,” sighed Louisa, “what I like.”
    â€œYou used to take lemon,” said F. Pennon anxiously.
    There was lemon too, sliced wafer-thin in a silver shell. Not to disappoint him, Louisa added lemon. F. Pennon himself spooned honey onto her plate, beside the hot scone. Then he sat back and watched her eat with an expression of rapture.
    â€œHow well I remember,” he exclaimed, “that week at Cannes!”
    â€œOh, so do I!” said Louisa.
    â€œWe did, didn’t we, get on rather well?—D’you think you could call me Freddy?”
    â€œEasily,” said Louisa—she was only too glad to find it wasn’t F. for Ferdinand.
    â€œYou attracted me at once,” continued Freddy, in happy reminiscence. “I don’t mind telling you I was a bit annoyed—being hit with that roll—then I saw you at the table, and that’s why I came over. What a thundering piece of luck it was!”
    â€œFor me too,” said Louisa.
    â€œYou really mean that?—I don’t live here regularly, you know,” said F. Pennon, “I’ve a house as well, outside Bournemouth.”
    The transition was abrupt—how nervous he was, poor F for Freddy!—but Louisa grasped the implication at once. Wives being obviously tabu, in Gladstone Mansions, he wanted her to know about the house.—Not in Knightsbridge; outside Bournemouth. Mr. Ross however had scarcely erred.
    â€œI can’t imagine anything nicer,” said Louisa encouragingly.
    â€œI hope you’ll think so when you see it. That is, if you do see it. I want you to see it.—But I’m going too fast,” said F. Pennon anxiously. “I’m rushing things. Have a slice of cake.”
    Though she hadn’t finished her scone, Louisa accepted it willingly. His nervousness was beginning to be infectious, and eating always steadied her.
    â€œNot that I don’t like it here too,” added Freddy, with a touch of wistfulness. “I do. I like it uncommonly.”
    At the thought of all he was giving up for her, Louisa’s heart quite melted—particularly as Gladstone Mansions was just the sort of place she liked herself. How different, the huge,