Free My Sister Celia by Mary Burchell Page A

its own, in most arguments.”
    “I ’ m sure you ’ re right in principle,” Freda agreed, as she got out of the car. “But I doubt if Mr. Clumber thinks I applied the principle in his case.”
    “No?” He stood smiling down at her for a moment in the lamplight. “But I still back you to hold on to that cottage.”
    “Why, of course!” Freda opened her eyes wide. “I never thought of anything else.” And she was pleased when Brian laughed again quite heartily and said, before he departed,
    “You ’ re a great acquisition to the family, Freda. We must see you again soon.”
    The next day was Friday, and during most of the day—when she was not strictly concerned with her office work—Freda found her thoughts swinging to and fro between the two rival interests of Celia and her cottage.
    That her relationship had been proved and accepted seemed to Freda the most wonderful and touching thing which had ever happened to her. Life would never be quite the same again, now that there was someone of her own in the world.
    But—to a lesser, but by no means inconsiderable degree—the cottage occupied her thoughts. For, just as Celia was, in some sense, a family, so the cottage was, in some sense, a home.
    Consequently, she awaited Laurence Clumber the following morning in a mood of something between trepidation and pleasurable excitement. And she was quite determined that, however charming and amusing he might choose to make himself, nothing he said or did was going to tempt her into more than a formal exchange of conventional remarks.
    As soon as she was settled beside him in the car, however, and they were threading their way out of London, curiosity got the better of her, and she said, “I didn ’ t realize, when we talked to each other a few evenings ago, that you ’ re really a very well - known chemist.”
    “Am I?” He smiled straight ahead and didn ’ t take his eyes off the road.
    “Well, Mr. Vanner—Celia ’ s adopted father—says so. He seemed quite surprised that I should know you.”
    “Why should he be?”
    “I mean—I think he was surprised that anyone so unimportant should know anyone so important,” explained Freda, without rancour.
    “Which of us is cast for which role in that sentence?” enquired her com p anion amusedly.
    “You know quite well!” she admonished him. “You are a pretty important person, aren ’ t you?”
    “I don ’ t know,” he said candidly. “One never feels important, I imagine, unless one is rather an ass. If you mean is my name the kind which might appear in a newspaper quiz, along with the names of sportsmen, politicians, comedians and others, I suppose the answer is ‘ yes ’ . That doesn ’ t prevent me from won dering sometimes if anything I do is of very much importance to anyone.”
    “Did things go wrong this week?’ enquired Freda, sympathetic in spite of herself.
    “They did rather.”
    “In what way?”
    “Oh, I just found that I’d been barking up the wrong tree for the last three weeks and all my work had been wasted.”
    Freda looked grave.
    “What did you do about it?” she asked, in a slightly hushed voice.
    “Started all over again, on another tack, of course,” he replied with a grin. “That ’ s what is meant by research.”
    She looked at him with slightly increased respect and said, “You must be very patient.”
    “I am. About anything I very much want.”
    “Oh,” said Freda, and thought a little uncomfortably about her cottage.
    “But now tell me what happened to you this week.” His tone became much lighter. “Have the family tangles straightened out?”
    “If you mean by that—have Celia and I proved up our relationship? Yes,” Freda said, with a brilliant smile. And, before she knew what she was doing, she was telling Laurence Clumber all about the scene at the Vanners ’ house.
    “It must have been pretty dramatic,” he observed.
    “Oh, it was. I was in absolute despair when it seemed that we had