Free The Innocents by Margery Sharp Page B

back to the house by way of the old coal cellar, but after about ten minutes she tired.
    â€œYoo-hoo, baby, I give you best!” called Cecilia. “Come out now and let Mummy hide!”
    â€œI’m afraid she won’t,” I explained. “It’s a very strict rule; you have to find her.”
    The idea of Antoinette playing any game whatever, especially according to rules, was naturally less surprising to Cecilia than to myself actually advancing it. Cecilia just laughed, and said she’d better go back to Woolmers to make sure of her room for a further week. The place being half empty, this was indeed superfluous, but I refrained from saying so.
    As for Antoinette, she had been sick amongst the cinders. What extraordinarily touched me was that for the first time she had also attempted to clean up the mess herself—or rather to conceal it, by scraping more cinders on top. We were a grubby pair enough, we both needed a thorough wash, before we ate our lunch together in peace!
    2
    Mrs. Brewer was extremely apologetic about coming back so early, but had thought it better, on account of Bobby. The Parrishes were her next-door neighbours, and Bobby, who now spent most of his time at Ipswich, was home on holiday—or that was how his mother put it, as though it were from a boarding school, not a hospital, her luckless son from time to time reappeared. She was always crazing Doctor to let her have him home for good, commiserated Mrs. Brewer, and sometimes for weeks it answered well enough; but then he’d have another of his bad turns, perhaps two or three running, and have to be sent back …
    â€œAnd it looked like he was starting one straight across the fence,” said Mrs. Brewer, “so I brought Miss away.”
    I was only glad she had acted so sensibly. Antoinette was frightened enough already.
    Yet to describe her as actually frightened by Cecilia would no doubt be an exaggeration. She disliked, even feared, any stranger—Janet Guthrie a rare exception; what was unfortunate was that the counterbalance of Cecilia’s beauty weighed with her not a whit. What Antoinette found beautiful, or at least appreciated, was the grotesque—Kevin’s squint, the hairy, warty old chin of Mrs. Bragg; she was like an art critic too besotted with Brueghel to see merit in the classicism of an Ingres, and thus Cecilia’s universal laissez-passer of loveliness for once, with her own daughter, didn’t advantage her.

8
    1
    But Cecilia was to stay a week at least, and I felt it a small victory; at the same time, having as it were promised her, offered as a bait, a social succès fou , was rather dismayed when I looked at my diary to see absolutely no Outdoor FêTe or even Garden Party imminent for her to shine at. Before June is always a dull patch. All I had down, actually for a couple of days later, was the Women’s Institute Auction in the Church Hall.
    Which was really no more than a Jumble sale, only our village prefers the higher excitement—particularly our Old Age Pensioners, bidding in pence for the odd cup or plate; they do not want them for themselves, but to make presents of, which surely reflects great credit on human nature. I must possess at least a dozen cracked saucers so gifted to me, and very useful they are to put under a plant-pot, though not of course while watering. Sounder kitchenware and ironmongery fetch shillings, and garments with any wear left in them; whatever might fetch pounds goes to the proper Auction at the Estate Agent’s. Thus I looked in the afternoon before simply from general nosiness, and was quite astonished to discover, tossed down on the Garments trestle, something really attractive.
    It was an Oriental robe, or caftan, of thin lavender-and-purple striped silk which Colonel Packett (father of Honoria), had brought back with him from somewhere in the Empire, and which often figured in our Nativity Plays; he having recently