Free Something Light by Margery Sharp Page B

a nice sit-down!”
    4
    At least Louisa, at this period, was getting a good many free meals. Calibrating a cup of char with Rossy as one extreme, and tea at Gladstone Mansions as the other, tea with the Meares, which they took out of doors, came about halfway. There was no solid silver, but there were clean plates, and the milk wasn’t poured from the bottle but from a jug with a Devonshire motto on it. (Referring actually to cream: O Devonshire cream, like Devonshire lasses/For richness and beauty the world surpasses —a souvenir of the Meares’ honeymoon.) There were no scones, but there was brown bread and butter; and if no plum cake, rock cakes, homemade.
    â€œMolly makes ’em,” munched Teddy Meare.
    â€œI’m afraid these got a little burnt,” apologized his wife.
    â€œPersonally I like ’em a bit burnt,” said Teddy.
    â€œSo do I,” said Louisa sincerely.
    Between them they cleared the plate; when only one rock cake was left, and Louisa couldn’t be persuaded to take it, the Meares wordlessly divided it between them …
    As she sat back replete, her mind no longer on her job, Louisa considered the Meares with more attention.
    Her first, hasty impression had been simply that they were rather like a couple of dachshunds themselves. It has often been remarked that any long-married pair tend to resemble one another, as do also dog-owner and dog; in the case of the Meares, both factors seemed to have worked in conjunction. Plump, sleek Mrs. Meare was but nearer chestnut, her husband nearer tan. As they jumped up into their basket-chairs for tea—or rather, as they sat down; it was the two canine patriarchs of the establishment who jumped up beside them—Louisa could have offered each a lump of sugar. Now, she began to see the flippancy misplaced.
    There was a peaceableness about them. What peace and content, indeed, lay over the whole shabby house, the whole shabby garden! And what did it spring from, if not from the relation between the Meares themselves?—Another thought struck Louisa: that in Teddy Meare, for almost the first time in her life, she’d met a man who made no demands on her sympathy.
    If Teddy Meare wanted sympathy, he’d get it from his wife; and wasn’t that a very right and proper thing?
    Unconsciously, Louisa sighed.
    â€œYou’re tired,” said Mrs. Meare kindly. “Why not stay a little? There’s another train at six, and if you’ll wait till Ted’s watered the cabbages—”
    â€œI’ll run you to the station,” said Mr. Meare.
    Louisa hesitated. She wanted to stay, but she didn’t know whether they wanted her.
    â€œWon’t it be a nuisance—?” she began uncertainly.
    â€œNot a bit!” cried both the Meares together.
    5
    Off stumped Teddy to uncoil the hose. Mrs. Meare went indoors and fetched her knitting. One of the dachshunds packed itself comfortably behind Louisa’s ankles. She began to feel like a neighbor who had dropped in for a quiet, customary chat.—But such evidently wasn’t the view taken by her hostess.
    â€œTed’s going to enjoy driving you to the station,” confided Mrs. Meare. “You look so Londony! I expect half the village, tomorrow, will be asking who you are!”
    Obviously one of Louisa’s newly acquired notions needed adjusting. A man’s car being so much a man’s appanage, shouldn’t a wife, even more than a prospective wife, be naturally jealous of it? Mrs. Meare didn’t sound jealous in the least: she sounded gleeful.
    â€œIt does him so much good,” she explained, “to cut a little dash now and again! (Just give Sebastian a push, if he’s annoying you.) We live,” added Mrs. Meare unnecessarily, “such a very quiet life.”
    Louisa felt she could hardly imagine a quieter, if driving herself to the station constituted cutting a dash. Yet it evidently suited Mrs.