Free Fantails by Leonora Starr Page A

short time ago and it left him very poorly. I fancy that’s what made Hugh’s mind up for him. I gather that his sister-in-law is coming to help him settle in. You’ll drop in on her, won’t you, in case she wants the low-down on the local shops or anything like that?”
    “Of course I will,” Alison promised her. She hoped the sister-in-law would not turn out to be alarmingly sophisticated. “Will Mrs. Moffat stay on with them?”
    “Yes, and they’re bringing servants from London. A married couple who have been with Hugh for years ... Hugh will be coming to stay for the last few days before we go, so that Tom can take him round the practice and hand over his cases.”
    “We’ll miss you,” Alison said, thinking that though she would be sorry to lose Tom and Ella, the prospect of new neighbours was not unattractive and would be good for them. When Mrs. Sinclair left, exclaiming that she would never get through all that must be done before leaving Swan House, she considered the matter of a new post for Logie as she made her pudding, and had come to a decision by the time Logie came flying up at lunch-time, full of the news, and ending “What should I do about a new job, do you think? This Dr. Brandon’s bringing a proper trained secretary who can do dispensing too. I shan’t be wanted.”
    “I shouldn’t hurry into anything you might regret,” Alison advised her. “Better to think things over for a little before you come to any decision. You were due, in any case, for a holiday.”
    Logie looked relieved. “I was, wasn’t I? I’ll take it when the Sinclairs go, and look about. Something will turn up, I suppose.”
    “Sure to,” said Alison, hoping that “something” might be marriage. For all that people talked of modern girls, woman’s emancipation, and the equality of the sexes, human nature, she was convinced, stayed fundamentally unchanged. A home, a husband, and children were, she was certain, the desire of ninety-nine girls in a hundred. Often their creative instinct ultimately found expression in some other way—music, painting, gardening, needlework, charity, a career. But Logie had no talent in particular, and it was impossible to picture her, so essentially feminine, finding lasting satisfaction in a career, even if she had the opportunity to make one.
    She was pleased when Sherry arrived at tea-time, bearing a fine fat pair of ducklings he had bought in Norwich market, and announced that he had told them at the Painted Anchor that he would be staying on there for another week.
    “Well, but I don’t like milk pudding,” said John Brandon. “I’d rather have some gooseb’ry tart, the same as you an’ Daddy.”
    This was his first meal at Swan House. Hugh Brandon had been established there for several days, having taken over the practice a week ago and moved in with his servants the day after the Sinclairs’ departure. His sister-in-law, Lucia Brill, had brought John here this morning, having taken him to a hotel at Southwold for a week during the upheaval of the move. The house in Harley Street had been let furnished and Swan House was in good order, but it had been as well to lighten the servants’ task of getting the new menage running smoothly by having John elsewhere.
    It was a new menage in more ways than one. In London John had been in the care of a nurse trained at a college in every aspect of child care. She had looked after him efficiently and kindly, but recently his father had felt that she regarded him too much in the light of a machine that must be kept in good running order, much as a mechanic might regard the engine of a car. John was, his father thought, too much the slave of timetables and food charts and routine, and though these things were good up to a point, they could be overdone. It would do John good to have more freedom. It was time, too, for him to become less the nursery baby, more the small boy, sharing his father’s meals in the dining-room. So Miss