Free Hester Waring's Marriage by Paula Marshall Page A

some despair that he was kind to her only because he was sorry for her.
    Today, however, she found him as handsome as ever, but very young and slightly gauche. His conversation was really rather dull and uninspired, no ridiculous jokes delivered in a way which brought on the giggles. This revision of her opinion of him came as a great surprise to her—ever since she had first met him he had been her masculine beau ideal .
    Perhaps it was meeting older men like…well…like Tom Dilhorne. Not that he was her masculine beau ideal , farfrom it, but there was no doubt that his impudently cool manner made Captain Parker seem rather callow.
    Consequently, her awe of him gone, she was more forthcoming with him than usual, if not to say vivacious, when he asked what was occupying the two girls so much after looking dubiously at Hester’s drab gown with which she and Lucy were struggling.
    She stared him straight in the eye for once and said airily, ‘Oh, Captain Parker, I am going to the most important party of the festive season and Lucy is helping me to trim my splendid new dress.’
    He looked rather surprised and asked her, ‘What party is that, Hester?’
    â€˜Oh, it’s much too important for you and Frank to be invited,’ she replied giddily and untruthfully. ‘It’s the one which the School Board gives to all the teachers, and only really tremendous swells like Mr Tom Dilhorne get invited to it.’
    It occurred to her that Tom seemed to be getting into her thoughts and her conversation a lot lately, and she watched Frank’s look of distaste at her presence, and her light-minded conversation, grow deeper at the sound of his name.
    â€˜Are you sure you ought to go, Hester?’ he said. ‘I know you work for them, but from what you say the people whom you will be going to meet there are not quite the thing.’
    Hester became totally reckless. ‘Well, you see, Frank, as I’m sure you appreciate, and Stephen, too—’ this was the first time she had ever used Captain Parker’s Christian name ‘—I am really not quite the thing, either, these days. And they do say that the food they give us is really rather good, and I don’t want to miss that. People who are quite the thing don’t seem to offer me very much to eat!’
    There was a ghastly silence after this home truth was shot at them with such panache.
    What can be the matter with me? Hester thought, surprised by her own daring. Where am I getting this dreadful impulse from to say these terrible things aloud to everyone instead of just thinking them?
    Now I find myself doing it all the time. I must go before Lucy throws me over completely. As it is, Frank will be telling her not to have me again. Not that she’ll take much notice of that . He’s properly under her thumb, if I don’t mistake. And why on earth did I ever think so much of Captain Parker? He’s just an ordinary, nice, kind…boy. It must be talking to Tom Dilhorne that’s making me so awful. I seem to start thinking dreadful things like this after every meeting with him. There must be something catching about his constant teasing.
    All the time that this was running through Hester’s fevered brain, she was saying goodbye to Lucy, picking up the horrible gown, paying impudent farewells to Frank and Stephen, who stared at her, aghast, and taking herself out the front door.
    There was a moment’s silence before all three began talking at once. ‘Well,’ from Lucy, ‘Oh dear,’ from Captain Parker, who had been flattered by Hester’s timid adoration, so markedly missing today, and ‘Good God!’ from Frank. ‘She’s plainer than ever and cheeky with it. I shan’t have her visiting you again, Luce.’
    â€˜Oh, yes, you will,’ said Lucy. ‘She’s no one else, poor thing.’
    She paused, suddenly inspired. ‘You don’t think