Free Fantails by Leonora Starr

changed the subject, though her heart was full of compassion. She was convinced that recently he had suffered the hurt of a deep disillusion, and it had left a scar.
    And as for Logie, she was deep in love, in love with life, in love with love, in love with all that Sherry represented in her eyes—romance, luxury, freedom to go where you pleased, do as you chose, have what you wanted: more than half in love with Sherry himself, fascinated by his unfamilar outlook. Trying to look at life through his eyes made of the world a different place, a place filled with new, strange, half-frightening possibilities. Alison, realising more than Logie herself of Logie’s state of mind and heart, was torn by hopes and fears: hopes that with Sherry Logie might find happiness, fears that he might leave their lives as suddenly as he had entered them.
    Preoccupied with new happenings and possibilities, Alison had given little thought to the change impending in their lives if the Sinclairs went to America, when one morning Ella Sinclair came to Fantails. Sherry had gone to Norwich to have his hair cut, so Alison was alone stringing currants for a summer pudding.
    “It’s settled!” Ella cried, her dark eyes sparkling. “We’re off at the end of next week. I suppose Americans are like that—always in a hustle. Anyhow, they’ve been pulling strings at the other end and got us cancelled passages. Flying —imagine it! A pair of staid old fogies like me and Tom suddenly uprooting ourselves and going off across the world!”
    She prattled on excitedly about their plans, as thrilled at forty-nine over the impending change as any girl of seventeen invited to her first dance. Alison, her fingers busy with the currants, listened in smiling silence, occasionally ejaculating, “You’ll both enjoy that!” or “How lovely for you!”
    “Here I go, burbling away about us, when you must be dying to know about Hugh Brandon,” Ella said at last.
    “Hugh—?”
    “Dr. Brandon, who’s taking on the practice. Tom thinks the world of him—he’s leaving you all in good hands! G.Ps. are apt to scoff at Harley Street, but if anybody scoffs at Hugh it’s a case of sour grapes. He’s brilliant, Tom says. Only forty-three, but he’s made a great name as a consultant.”
    Alison was trying to remember something. “Wasn’t he the man who flew to India not long ago to see some maharajah who was ill?”
    “That’s it. He only stayed there five days, and Tom heard he got five thousand for it!”
    “But why ...” Alison hesitated, trying to word her question tactfully. Ella said it for her. “Why should he leave Harley Street for Market Blyburgh? Family reasons. He’s a widower with a little boy of five. The child is delicate, and Hugh feels he should be in the country, yet wants to have him under his own eye—naturally enough. He has the sense to know that money isn’t everything. Tom has a notion that he won’t be sorry to break away from London for a while. It seems he has become the fashion among rich women who have nothing better to do with their time and money than play at being ill if they can find an attractive doctor to listen to the tales of their imaginary aches and pains. Hugh’s not the man to enjoy wasting his time over that sort of nonsense.”
    “Does he know Market Blyburgh?”
    “He spent a week-end with us last year. You were coming to Sunday supper to meet him, but Andrew turned up unexpectedly on embarkation leave at the last minute.”
    “Of course. Now I remember. You spoke about him then. That’s why the name seemed so familiar.”
    “He took a great fancy to the place and to Swan House, and said jokingly to Tom that if ever he wanted a locum or to sell the practice, he was his man. Tom thought no more of it at the time, but when this American business came along he got in touch with Hugh and asked if he’d been serious—never expecting that it would come to anything. But the little boy had measles very badly a