Free Nurse in Waiting by Jane Arbor Page B

struck off ‘across-country’ towards the boundary wall which was out of sight.
    She knew that the park’s circumference was about two and a half miles, but she had not yet had time or opportunity to walk round it. She half-wondered whether she would ask Shuan to come with her, but in the end she set out alone.
    Towards the end of her walk, she came to the weed-ridden drive leading down to the main gateway and turn up it towards the house. But before she reached it curiosity took her over a narrow path to the right, in order to look at the Dower House where McKiley and the Belgian farm student lived together.
    It was small, of the Georgian period, with a slate roof and characteristic windows; it was more homely looking and seemed to be in better repair than Carrieghmere itself. Joanna was just about to turn away, remembering how she had told Roger that she could not question René Menden” on Mr. McKiley’s doorstep,” when someone came up behind her and she turned about to see it was young Menden itself.
    He clicked his heels and bowed formally, though he was in working-clothes. “Mademoiselle Merivale? You wish to visit us?”
    “No, not really. I only came over to look at the house —”
    “But you will come in? In this country they have n o t —” he corrected himself carefully—”do not have — the custom of the five o’clock tea, but Madame ‘Agerty know I find her potato-cakes delicious, and at about this hour they often await me. You will share them with me, no?”
    “Well, just for a minute.” Joanna’s healthy appetite, stimulated by her walk, was registering considerable interest in the matter of potato-cakes. By now she was no stranger to them. They would be hot, with butter oozing out at the sides ... Besides, her curiosity about Justin McKiley extended to the house where he lived and this was her opportunity to see it.
    René Menden stood aside as she passed into the hall before him. Then he flung down the hedge-stake he had been using as a walking-stick and going to the head of a flight of basement stairs at the back of the hall, called down them: “Aggy, chérie !” a summons to which there was no immediate response. René unbent so far as to ma k e a face at Joanna over his shoulder before he tried again: “Aggy, my cabbage!”
    This time the fat Irishwoman whom Joanna knew to be Mrs. Hagerty, Justin McKiley’s housekeeper, came hurrying up the stairs, wiping her hands on her apron as she came.
    “Now, Menden,” she said, pronouncing each syllable to rhyme with ‘ten,’ “ye’ve no call to be addressin’ a Christian woman by thim vegetable names. What is it ye want, now?”
    René spread his hands. “But potato-cakes, surely? and perhaps tea for Mademoiselle Merivale?”
    “There’s no tea but what I had to me dinner. There’d be a lick of it lef t—”
    Joanna shuddered. “Not for me,” she said hastily. “A—a glass of milk will do.” (At least they couldn’t stew milk for a couple of hours and turn out the result as a black, viscous broth! )
    “ Alo r s! Milk and potato-cakes, very hot!” ordered René . He turned to Joanna. “This way. It is here that we eat.”
    He led the way into a room off the hall, where a small peat-fire burned in the grate and where the tablecloth had an air of being more or less permanently laid. A couple of Dublin newspapers hung over the arms of the worn leather chairs by the fire, but there seemed to be no books anywhere. A castor-oil plant stood on a bamboo table in the window embrasure, and the room looked as if its interior decoration had been inspired more by Mrs. Hagerty’s standards of taste than those of anyone else.
    René Menden looked at Joanna’s dismayed face and laughed. “ Tous les con f orts mode r nes —every modern convenience, no?”
    “Wel l—” began Joanna. She had not expected the debonair Justin McKiley to be contented with this.
    René shrugged. “It is nothing!” he declared. “We are not much here,