Free Ladies’ Bane by Patricia Wentworth Page B

Allegra was being run off her legs. That’s the way girls begin with that sort of thing-it’s just something to pick them up and carry them over a sticky patch.”
    As he spoke, there was a loud “Coo-ee!” from the quarry top. Margot Trent was leaning over and waving. When they looked up, she shouted, “Watch me!” and began to run along the edge, balancing with an arm out on either side. Geoffrey shouted, “Get back!” But she only burst out laughing. She had just passed out of sight behind a tall conifer rooted some four feet down, when there was a most appalling scream followed by the sound of a crash.
    Geoffrey said, “Oh, my God!”, swung round upon his heel, and ran. Ione followed him, her heart banging, her breath coming short.
    A rock garden is no place through which to run a headlong course-steps going up and steps going down-the unexpected pool-the sudden sharp descent-the boulder which masks an unexpected twist in the path. Looking back afterwards, she could not understand why she had not stumbled and come down. Geoffrey at least knew the way, yet she came up with him almost as he reached the foot of the quarry wall.
    And there was nothing there.
    He stood staring down at the harmless shrubs and plants which were all that there was to see. And then, very slowly, his glance travelled upwards whilst Ione’s followed it. There might be a crumpled, broken body caught somewhere on that irregular rocky face. Three-quarters of the way up, and nothing yet. The lower branches of the conifer came into view only a matter of four feet from the top. It rose up in a blue-green pillar, very beautiful and shapely, and from behind it there came great gusts and shouts of laughter.
    Ione stepped back. She had to see, and she was too nearly under the cliff. She stepped back, and she saw Margot holding to the tree, her face scarlet, her eyes streaming. She bent this way and that in her paroxysms of mirth. In a voice which Ione would hardly have recognized Geoffrey shouted, “Keep still!”
    But this merely provoked her to fresh explosions.
    “Didn’t I take you in beautifully! Didn’t you think I’d come to a sticky end!” She leaned against the tree and shook the tears away. “That was a stone I pushed over, wrapped up in a bit of sacking! You’ll find it behind the thing with the red berries! And didn’t I give a lovely scream! I’d got it all thought out, because I’ve got a rope round my waist, and it’s tied to the tree so I couldn’t fall if I tried! All right, all right-I’m going up now! Just watch me!”
    In a moment she had scrambled, wriggled, and jerked herself to the top of the cliff. It was not a graceful performance. One of her suspenders had broken, and the stout pink leg which the fallen stocking exposed was covered with scratches. As she stood there laughing and undoing the rope at her waist, Geoffrey turned with a sound of pure rage, and went striding away in the direction of the house.

CHAPTER 11
    Oh, no, we never scold her,” said Jacqueline Delauny. Her tone was that of the civilized person who is addressing a member of some backward tribe.
    Ione’s reactions were of the simplest. She felt an inward glow of fury, and she said,
    “Why?”
    Miss Delauny’s superiority became a little more pronounced.
    “It would not help.”
    “Have you tried?”
    “Oh, no. Any harshness would only make things worse.”
    “Well, I think you should see what a good scolding would do. I quite agree that she doesn’t mean any harm, but she ought to be made to realize that this sort of thing isn’t funny. I never had such a shock in my life, and I don’t suppose Geoffrey had either. Well, that’s all right-we can take it. But supposing Allegra had been there-are you going to tell me she is fit to have a shock like that, or that she ought to be in the house with someone who is liable to give her that kind of shock at any moment? Margot probably won’t do that particular thing again, but can you, or