Free Reluctant Relation by Mary Burchell Page A

mind, sweetheart. Let’s get you into the house, and we’ll all have tea. That will make you feel better,” Leigh assured her.
    Mrs. Parker’s exclamations of sympathy and woe did much to restore Pearl, and as soon as tea was produced, she cheered up completely.
    They had hardly finished when Felicity and Cecile returned. Felicity gave a pretty exhibition of motherly concern over the child, and in the expansiveness of the moment kissed Leigh too, presumably for his part in conveying Pearl safely back home. He took it with a faintly cynical smile. But Pearl opened her eyes very wide and asked with artless candor,
    “Is everything all right again?”
    “How do you mean ... everything, darling?” Her mother patted her head. “It’s lovely to have you home, if that’s what you mean, and of course no one is going to scold you for running out into the traffic now.”
    “No. I didn’t mean that.” Pearl dismissed her own affairs airily. “I mean did you kiss Leigh because we’re all friends again?”
    For a moment even Felicity looked slightly nonplussed. Then she laughed and said, “You quaint child! I suppose that describes the situation. We’re friends again. Note the exact word, Leigh.” And she turned to him, with a slight but significant smile.
    “I note it. In the strict sense of having observed that you used the word,” he replied dryly. “No more.”
    “What does that mean?” She tossed her head.
    “Whatever you like to make of it,” he retorted. “I must be going now.”
    He kissed Pearl and bade Felicity a casual goodbye. Then, as he came up to Meg, he paused a moment and said, “I don’t know what arrangements your father and my sister are making, but I shall see you soon.”
    “Perhaps.” Meg was deliberately noncommittal.
    Then he went away, and Felicity asked with frank curiosity, “What did Leigh mean by that? He seems full of cryptic remarks this afternoon.”
    Meg explained briefly about the visit of her father and Claire, and Felicity said vaguely, “How lovely.”
    But as she dismissed the matter from her mind in favor of paying some real attention to Pearl at last, Meg very easily forgave her.
    She could not decide whether Felicity really had some time to spare from her work for once or whether she had been genuinely shaken by Pearl’s accident. Whatever the reason, she devoted a lot of time to her little girl that evening. And so charming was she about it that, in spite of all previous demonstrations to the contrary, Meg actually found herself thinking that perhaps Felicity was a devoted mother after all.
    She even went upstairs to say goodnight to Pearl, and when Meg went out into the garden to collect the chairs, since it looked as though it might rain later, she heard Pearl’s delighted laughter floating from the window of her bedroom.
    While Meg was out there, Dick arrived and, with casual efficiency, relieved her of her task.
    “Let me take those.” He expertly folded and stacked two or three chairs and carried them toward the garden shed, while she followed with an assortment of cushions.
    “So you got Pearl home all right?” he said, when he had fitted everything in.
    “Yes. How did you know?”
    “I dropped in at Leigh’s place for a drink, and he’d just got back. By the way, I met your father there.”
    “Did you?” She smiled and looked pleased.
    “And your stepmother, of course.”
    “Oh, Claire. Hadn’t you met her before?”
    “No. I gather she lived in the south, even before she married your father. And in any case, we haven’t known Leigh all that long, you know.”
    “No?”
    “About three or four months.”
    “I see.”
    “In fact—” he glanced thoughtfully at Meg as they went into the house once more “—I don’t think she knows anything about Felicity’s engagement.”
    There was a slight question in his tone, so that Meg said, with dry reassurance, “She certainly doesn’t know about it through me.”
    “Tactful girl.” Dick