Free A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard Page A

honey,” he said.
    I had to bear being loaded with the stuff, had to fumble for my purse. But at last we were going down the garden path and I was headed for home and freedom.
    As we reached the gate, Heregrove remarked, “I made a poor bundle.”
    â€œIt’s all right,” I protested.
    â€œWell, I think I can arrange it a little better in your hands, so it won’t fall before you reach home.” And he began to pat the paper and arrange my sleeve and pull out the lapel of my coat, which he said would get crushed.
    I simply hate being pawed; and being pawed by a man who, however groundlessly, you mistrust, and who, with every pat, puts a revolting smell under your nose—all that turns an insult into an injury. Literally I broke away from him.
    â€œThank you,” I stuttered, “thank you. Thank you. Quite all right. Will do nicely—splendidly.”
    I sidled off rapidly with my load, like a small crab which just scuttles under a rock before a gull gets a firm hold on it and pecks it to death. I glanced back in the dusk; the last thing I saw was Heregrove making his way again across to the stables.
    I hustled on until I was safe once more in my own place. I had never come back so upset from anything. My return from my upset with Mr. Mycroft was child’s play compared with this. Then I had been irritated and a little nervous; now I felt something beside which that had been almost amusing. For a moment I was so spent and foolishly anxious that I felt I would have been positively welcoming if I had heard that assured old voice at the door. It would have been reassuring and I needed reassurance.

Chapter V
    THE FLY IS MISSED
    Still, just as after my upsetting visit to Mr. Mycroft, so on this morning succeeding my latest upset, I woke with every care off my mind. “Perhaps when you live very securely by yourself a little upset, even a little fright, is occasionally good for you,” I thought to myself as I lay in bed listening to Alice laying the breakfast things downstairs. “It may stir the liver, or the glands, or something which needs a slight emotional rub-down now and then.” Certainly the sound of one’s comfortable life being got ready again for one to enjoy was particularly pleasant that morning. I bathed leisurely, the more to relish my enjoyment, and also in the hope that, if I dallied, Alice would have, in her argot, slipped up the village and popped in a little ’ouse’old shopping, and so I would be quite secure in the unadulterated pleasure in my own reserved way of life.
    My plan worked. When I got down, the house was all for myself. The kettle simmered on its trivet with a sense of completely reassuring, comfortable patience. The toast was in the grate. I like my toast hard but hot. The eggs were ready to be put in the spirit-stove boiler, which was simmering also with well-bred efficiency. I dropped the eggs in, looking at my wrist watch, and brought the toast onto the table. Took from the hob the warmed teapot—brown earthenware—I keep my Georgian silver for afternoon tea—gave it the three spoonsful of Lap-sang and poured the boiling water neatly onto the leaves.
    It was, as it happens, the fragrant smoky smell, faintly tarry, but very refined, which brought back that abominable disinfectant of Heregrove’s into my thoughts. I was (I always am) in my dressing gown at breakfast. I remembered now that on coming in I had put my jacket in the wardrobe, meaning to have it sent to the cleaners. I had carefully washed my hands, but I could, when I looked closely, still see a slight discoloration on the sides of my two fingers, and when I raised them to my nose I could yet detect very faintly, but still unmistakably, that smell. But you had to put your nostrils quite near to get it. I thought, though, I would see what another scouring would do. Landing the eggs, I ran up the stairs. After a rapid scrub, which I had to own did not