Free Thrush Green by Miss Read Page B

carrying a voice for Mrs. Bailey's peace of mind. One of the drooping fuchsias detached herself from the wall and drifted toward the kitchen.
    "We oughtn't to be too long—" began Dimity timidly, hauling up a watch on a long silver chain from the recesses of her bodice.
    "Doesn't matter if we fry it!" responded her friend. Dimity looked tearful.
    "But you know it doesn't—"
    "Agree with me?" boomed Miss Bembridge menacingly. "Of course it does! Fried fish is the only way to eat the stuff."
    "But doctor said only this morning that you shouldn't touch fried food, darling, with that rash. It's for your own—"
    Ella broke in mercilessly, tapping her cigarette ash forcefully into Mrs. Bailey's saucer.
    "My own good! I know, I know! Well, I've said we'll have it in parsley sauce, much as I detest it, so let's forget it."
    Dimity turned apologetically to Mrs. Bailey.
    "I do feel fish is so much more wholesome in a mild white sauce. So pure and nourishing, and so light too. But it takes longer to cook of course. I said to Ella this morning, 'A little light fish, or perhaps a boiled egg, while you've got that rash, will be the most wholesome thing you can have.'"
    Mrs. Bailey smiled and nodded and thought of Mr. Woodhouse, her favorite Emma's father, who also recommended boiled eggs. "An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome, Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs." And she wondered, looking at Dimity's pathetic anxiety, if she might be driven by it to go even further and suggest "a small basin of thin gruel," which was all that Mr. Woodhouse could honestly recommend, if Miss Bembridge's rash persisted. For the sake of the friends' domestic harmony Mrs. Bailey prayed that Dr. Lovell's prescription would be speedily successful.
    It was at this moment that Dotty Harmer fumbled her way into "The Fuchsia Bush." Her steel spectacles were awry, her woolen stockings lay, as always, in wrinkles around her chicken-thin legs, and her hair sprouted at all angles beneath a speckled-gray chip-straw hat.
    The less languid of the attendants went forward to greet her.
    "Just one of your small stone-milled loaves, please," murmured Dotty, peering into the glass cabinet that held the loaves.
    The girl replied with considerable satisfaction that all the small ones had been sold, but there was, most providentially, just one large one left. This threw Dotty into the greatest agitation. She dumped her string bag on the floor, thrust her hat farther back upon head, and began to pour out her troubles.
    "But I can't possibly use a large loaf! Living alone as I do a small one lasts me three days at least, and even if I make rusks of the last bit for the animals it is really more than I can manage. And in any case, now that the weather has turned warm I shan't need to light the stove and so there will be no means of making the rusks!"
    The girl suggested a small white loaf. Dotty's agitation was now tinged with horror.
    "A white loaf?" squeaked Dotty, with such repugnance that one might reasonably have supposed that she had been offered bread made from fine-ground human bones. "You should know by now my feelings about white bread. It never, never appears in my house!"
    "D OTTY !" bawled Miss Bembridge, at this point, in a voice that set the crockery rattling. "Get them to cut it in half!"
    The girl cast Ella a look so deadly that it was a wonder that Miss Bembridge's ample form was not shriveled to a small dead leaf. Dotty's face, however, was alight with relief.
    "Dear Ella! How sensible! Yes, of course," she said, turning to the assistant, "just cut the large whole-meal one in half."
    The girl flounced off to the kitchen, lips compressed, and returned with a bread board and knife. She cut the loaf in two and held the board out for Dotty's inspection.
    "Oh dear," said Dotty, her face clouding again, "I wonder if I really need half. It's quite a large amount, isn't it? I mean, for one person?" She peered anxiously at the girl's face