Free The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes

leader no doubt and Polly the devoted little slave.
    So Mrs. Winter made up her mind. It wasn’t too late, thank goodness, even now: Gwilym’s old mother would be glad not to have the child longer than could be helped—she didn’t find it too easy getting about these days, Nellie had said, yet the longer (Mrs. Winter felt) the poor little new baby had a clear field, the better its chances of arousing the mother-love so strangely withheld.
    She would ask Mrs. Wadamy this very evening if Rachel couldn’t come here after the grandmother was done with her. For a week, say, till they saw how things went. Tonight as ever was she’d write to Nellie ...
    â€œA penny for your thoughts, Mrs. Winter,” said Mr. Wantage, pretending to topple Polly off his knee.
    Mrs. Winter rose in silence and gave Polly so unusually loud and loving a kiss that they both looked at her wonderingly.
16
    Presently evening closed in on Mellton Chase: all over the house the sound of curtains being drawn, everywhere the lights going on—front stairs as well as back.
    In spite of Trivett Mary had got home in time to ask Jeremy Dibden (an Oxford friend of Augustine’s, and a Mellton neighbor) over to dine with them. A party of three; for Parliament was sitting and Gilbert (Mary’s husband) was detained in London, though probably he might be coming later.
    Jeremy was tall and very thin, with narrow shoulders. “He must have been very difficult to fit,” thought Mary (noting how well his dinner-jacket in fact did fit him): “especially with that arm.” Polio in childhood had wilted his right arm: when he remembered he lifted it with the other hand into appropriate attitudes, but otherwise it hung from him like a loose tail of rope.
    Mary’s own face resembled her brother’s: it was broad, intelligent, honest, sunburned to a golden russet color that toned with her curly reddish hair, and lightly freckled. It was almost a boy’s face, except for the soft and sensitive lips. Jeremy’s face on the other hand had much more of a girl’s traditional pink-and-white briar-rose delicacy of coloring: and yet the cast of Jeremy’s features was not effeminate—it would be fairer to say they had the regular perfection of the classical Greek. In spite of his faulty body Jeremy reminded Mary a little of the Hermes of Praxiteles: his lips tended to part in that same half-smile. “Yes, and he’s aware of the likeness,” she thought; for his exquisite pale hair was allowed to curl so perfectly about his forehead it might well be carved marble.
    â€œSomehow, though, his face isn’t at all insipid because of the life in it: just very, very young.”
    Now, dinner was ended. The white cloth had been taken away, Waterford glass gleamed on the dark mahogany by candlelight.
    Undoubtedly the proper time had come to leave the two young men to their port (or rather, their old Madeira—port being out of fashion). But as Mary rose the talk had just reached the theme of the meaning of human existence. “Don’t get up and go,” said Jeremy, disappointed, “just when we’ve started discussing something sensible at last.”
    Mary glanced hesitantly from her brother to his friend. “Very well,” she said slowly, sitting down again a little reluctantly (was she perhaps become lately a shade less interested than she used to be in these abstract discussions?): “But only for a minute or two: Mrs. Winter has asked to see me about something.”
    â€œAnd so you’ve got to go!—That’s typical,” exclaimed her brother. “Admit I’m dead right, cutting loose from the whole thing.”
    â€œIt’s known as Service,” said Jeremy to Augustine reprovingly, his light tongue flicking more meanings than one out of the single word. Then he turned to Mary: “But tell me; there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know: what