Free Summer at the Haven by Katharine Moore Page A

plate cleared up, and the kettle on for her early cup of tea. But then, there was the affair of the bats. A pair of them had takenup daylight residence in a corner of Tom’s attic and Miss Blackett, who looked upon bats as vermin, told Tom to get the kitchen steps and get rid of them, but Tom had said, “Best let ’em bide and have their sleep out, Lady Miss Blackett,” and when she went up the next day to inspect, they were still there. She had a horror of the creatures and could not bring herself to go near them, but she was unwilling to confess this or to own up to the fact that apparently she was powerless to get Tom to do as he was told – so the bats remained.
    His disregard of her order in certain matters, though never rude or defiant, naturally upset her and it did not happen only to her. Fred Mills, the old gardener, complained that Tom picked flowers from the garden occasionally without asking leave, and Mrs Perry, with some unwillingness, confirmed this.
    “I’ve told the lad they’re not his flowers and he’s no right to them,” grumbled Fred, yet Tom continued to make up his little nosegays quite openly.
    What he did with them Mrs Perry later discovered when one day she noticed Miss Brown with a bunch of her treasured clove-pinks pinned to her flat chest.
    “What lovely flowers,” Mrs Perry shouted pleasantly.
    Miss Brown actually blushed. “Tom brought them to me,” she said. “He brings me flowers now and again, and I like to wear some of them sometimes, just to show how I appreciate them.”
    Mrs Perry, who had always felt a little sorry for Miss Brown, said no more. “She obviously doesn’t wonder where he gets them from. Poor thing, I wonder if anyone’s ever bothered to give her flowers before,” she thought.
    As for old Fred, he was completely won over by what happened when, before the repairs to the fence had been completed, Mr Jackson’s bullocks staged another marauding expedition. This time, however, Tom was onthe scene. “I never seed the like. That lad just told ’em to go home, just went up to that little devil of a leader, he did, and stood right in his way and put out his hand to him, coaxing like, and talked to him, and he turned tail and home he went afore he’d done any harm, and the rest just followed him. How did ’e manage that then? I axed him and he said, ‘I tells ’im he was a silly ole duffer to come wandering into a mucky wood, leaving his nice medder, and how every step he took lost him a bite of his own good grass, and he saw sense.’ He do have a wonderful way with animals, that’s for sure.”
    That was another thing: at first Miss Blackett had been pleased that Lord Jim and Tom had taken to one another. It was a credit mark for the boy. But, as time went on, she began to resent the cat’s marked preference for his company, even above her own. She would not admit that she was so foolish as to be jealous, but what she was beginning to feel was undoubtedly very like jealousy.
    When she learned about Tom’s picking Mrs Perry’s flowers (it was difficult not to hear about things at The Haven), Miss Blackett felt she must apologize to her but Mrs Perry secretly thought that far more harm was done to her treasures by Lord Jim than by Tom.
    “I don’t really mind, Miss Blackett,” she said. ‘I think he believes all the flowers in the garden belong to us all, himself included, as if we were all one family, I mean, and perhaps too it’s because he’s used to picking wild flowers wherever and whenever he likes. Anyway, I don’t mind at all, so please don’t say anything to the boy.”
    Miss Blackett sniffed. “Much good it would do if I did, with Tom,” she thought.
    The little incident of the nosegay of pinks, however, made Mrs Perry observe Dorothy Brown more closely.
    “Don’t you think Miss Brown’s changed lately?” shesaid to Miss Dawson. “In spite of her deafness, which seems to be getting worse, she’s brighter somehow. I don’t mean