Free Starlight by Stella Gibbons

her.
    She did not usually look for such things, liking, as she did, the open air and solitary places above all else, but the atmosphere of solid comfort backed by a considerable amount of money, was soothing. She felt that in MacLeod House an absorbing grief could be indulged without any interruptions from the world outside; the tears could burn themselves dry in sullen peace.
    The door opened, and a small old man in a white jacket looked out at her inimicably.
    ‘I’m Miss Pearson. Good-evening,’ said Peggy, whose first encounter with a houseman this was. She did not smile and neither did Hobbs.
    ‘Good-evening, miss. Mrs Corbett is expecting you. Will you come this way, please.’
    She followed him across a hall that was in fact a large and lofty room, panelled in white, carpeted with old rugs in soft blues and browns and pinks, and having, under an arch and some white fretted wood vaguely Oriental in suggestion, a staircase leading up to a gallery running round the interior of the house. Peggy’s eye lingered on the carpets. Yes; they were the real thing. She could remember having seen, as a child, that particular kind of rug being woven – ‘in the sloms of Tashkent’, she thought.
    ‘Miss Pearson,’ said the houseman, opening a door.
    The room seemed as large as Saint James’s Parish Hall, it was the one built out over the great lawn, the one overlooking Hendon in its valley; and the warm scented air struck Peggy’s face, already too hot, with that sensation of deliberate insult that most people experience on feeling a draught.
    Two people were islanded in the midst of its splendours of green walls and tasselled cushions and paintings of flowers; a stout old white-haired woman in a black dress, and a middle-aged man who was standing by the mantelpiece. He had an air of wanting to rest his arm along it, had not the procession of dogs, modelled in china and of every breed, that walked along it, prevented him. The two were watching television.
    Four black pugs, all, at the first glance identical, sprang up at Peggy’s entrance, and began to leap about, bark and caress her, sniffing at her ankles and jumping against her skirt.
    ‘There you are, my dear,’ said Mrs Corbett, smiling and pleased, ‘punctual to the minute (Arnold, turn that thing off, please). Down, boys, down; you know Peggy, now. Don’t make a fuss.’
    Peggy dropped composedly on one knee and began to caress the pugs, keeping her eyes on Mrs Corbett.
    ‘It’s lovely to see them again,’ she said, and then her glance just moved, with the smallest effect, to the man.
    ‘Oh yes, of course – you don’t know my son – that was the fortnight you were in New York, Arnold, you remember – while I was at Hove, I mean, staying with Vera – my son, Arnold, Miss Pearson. Get Peggy a drink, Arnold. Peggy, what will you have, dear?’
    Slight smiles and inclinations of the two heads, the sleek dark one and the one that was balding. He studied her, with a morose look that was just short of rudeness, as she knelt beside the dogs, and, having heard her clear little ‘Cinzano, please,’ busied himself with filling a glass.
    ‘How did you come?’ Mrs Corbett went on comfortably while her blue eyes fixed themselves eagerly on Peggy’s face, ‘you did say you haven’t a car, didn’t you? and we’re so cut off here, if you’ve no car …’
    ‘It was quite easy. I hired one.’
    ‘So much more reliable than taxis … very sensible … Now do lie down , boys,’ to the dogs, ‘we don’t want you fidgeting about.’
    Three of them flopped back and resumed their doze, but the fourth remained on his hind legs, paws resting on Peggy’s arm and eyes fixed steadily on her face.
    ‘What is it, then, Dee?’ she asked him, letting the caressing note sound in her voice that came as rarely as her smile. She made a tiny grimace at his haughty black mask, then looked across at Mrs Corbett and briefly laughed. Dee turned away his head, hurt.
    ‘You