Free Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp Page B

free. (Pussy-willow that sold for a shilling in Piccadilly and sixpence even in Paddington.) In the room she shared with Hilda every available surface was soon covered with chipped vases and old jam-jars, filled with these spoils. She brought moss into the kitchen, also a thrush’s egg, fallen from the nest, which she tried to hatch in a tea-cosy. Later she tried to blow it. This thorough-going attempt to cram a whole country-childhood into the space of a few weeks was very much in Cluny’s character; it was not however in Mrs. Maile’s character to allow it.
    Mrs. Maile put up with a great deal, almost any parlourmaid being better than none; but after Cluny played truant for two hours, simply to look at lambs, the housekeeper decided that the time had come to give her a thorough dressing-down. This was something Mrs. Maile did particularly well: generations of Bessies had been reduced to tears in an average of five minutes, and to penitence in an average of ten. Mrs. Maile rather grimly allotted Cluny a quarter of an hour, and there is little doubt that Cluny too would have succumbed, but for one unforeseeable accident. “Who do you think you are?” demanded Mrs. Maile coldly; and this question, awaking such familiar echoes, effectually distracted Cluny’s thoughts. The rest of the scolding was lost on her: she was far away, back in String Street with Mr. Porritt. Passionately she wondered how he was managing without her; whether Aunt Addie darned his socks properly; whether the respectable woman gave him his favourite liver and bacon on a Saturday night. It was quite wonderful how little his letters managed to communicate: “All well, everything much the same, ” wrote Mr. Porritt—with such regularity that Cluny sometimes wondered why he didn’t send a post card with just “Ditto ” on it …
    â€œWell?” repeated Mrs. Maile impatiently. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”
    â€œI do wish Uncle Arn was here!” sighed Cluny.
    The housekeeper’s face relaxed. She had, as it happened, actually been speaking of Mr. Porritt, drawing a most harrowing picture of his emotions on learning of Cluny’s wickedness: she thought perhaps Cluny wished he were there so that she might promise him to do better.
    â€œAnd why do you say that, my dear?” asked Mrs. Maile helpfully.
    â€œI’d like him to see the lambs,” sighed Cluny.
    Like Mr. Ames a month earlier, Mrs. Maile felt baffled. For it wasn’t even impertinence; it was something far more elusive and—and unnatural. The housekeeper was so put out that she actually waited for Cluny to resume the conversation, on the chance that her next remark might prove more answerable.
    â€œI’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you were saying. Have you sacked me?” asked Cluny hopefully.
    Mrs. Maile would have given a month’s wages to be able to answer, “Yes, I have.”
    III
    It was on one of her legitimate excursions, however, on a Wednesday afternoon, that Cluny, having upset Mrs. Maile, upset Andrew Carmel. Andrew was tramping the lanes at a steady four miles an hour, trying not to observe the beauties of nature: he was out purely for exercise. As he had hoped, exercise drugged his mind; he achieved an almost complete unawareness of his surroundings—until suddenly, at a point where Colonel Duff-Graham’s boundary marched with the road, there leapt through a gate a golden dog followed by a tall dark girl in a mackintosh.
    A mackintosh, especially in the country, has peculiar properties. It blends people into the landscape, making them look as if they belonged there. Worn with heavy shoes and a battered hat, or no hat at all, it is for several months of the year the uniform of the country gentlewoman. A dog goes with it. Andrew therefore did not recognize Cluny for at least five seconds, or four seconds after he had recognized Roderick.
    â€œHello,” he