Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Shackleton's Last Voyage: The Story of the Quest by Macklin A H Alexander Hepburn Wild Frank
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 259 lines and 12725 words, and 6 pages
The Reverend Henry perambulated the room with knitted brow.
"I never bought a Sunday paper of any sort in my life. Never."
"But it's enormously important, you know. They may easily have been surrounded and captured." He returned to the window. "Hullo, he's gone to the door. I say, Cook has bought one. This is exciting. I should never have thought Cook would have done that."
"It raises rather a nice point," said Mrs. Henry.
The Reverend Henry returned resolutely to his book. The shouts of the newsvendor died away.
"We must not forget," said the Reverend Henry irrelevantly, "that Cook is a Dissenter." Then suddenly he broke out. "I wish I knew," he said. "I am not paying the least attention to this book and I shan't sleep well, and I shall get up about two hours before the morning paper arrives, and be restive till I know whether the Belgians got out. But what am I to do? I can't ask Cook."
"I might go down," his wife volunteered. "I needn't say anything about it, you know. I could just stroll about the kitchen and change the orders for breakfast. The paper is pretty sure to be lying about. There may be headlines."
"No," said the Reverend Henry with determination, "I really cannot consent to it."
"Well, I may as well go to bed. Don't sit up late."
The Reverend Henry did sit up rather late. He was wide awake and ill at ease. At last he listened intently at the door and then took a candle and stole down the passage.
The Reverend Henry had not been in his own kitchen for close upon ten years, and he did not know the way about very well. He had adventures and some moments of rigid suspense while the clatter of a kicked coal-scuttle died away in the distance. But when at last he crept noiselessly up-stairs he was assured of a good night's rest.
"What a mess your hands are in," said Mrs. Henry sleepily.
"Yes," said Henry. "That miserable woman had used it to lay the fire. But it's all right. They did get out--most of them."
So the Censor has let the secret out at last, and the rumours of the last 70 days prove to be well founded.
It's a long, long way, but they've got there at last.
UNINTELLIGENT ANTICIPATION.
"It's unfair to use Greek to me."
"But we can't afford a new tea-set."
"Then why did you ask so many to tea at once?"
"I didn't think," said Alison. "They are coming to make pyjamas for our soldiers in the trenches, and I simply thought that the more people came the more pyjamas there would be."
"How many cups have we?"
"Only five tea-cups. Jessie broke two more yesterday, and there's one with a piece out that you or I could use. Oh! and there are the two breakfast cups and two odd ones which would make up the number, but they're such a mixed lot."
Jessie is our domestic staff and a champion china-breaker.
"If Jessie," I said, "were not so good to young Peter I should insist on handing her back her credentials. Hold! I have the germ of an idea. Leave me to work it out, please. I see credit, nay kudos, in it."
At the end of ten minutes Alison looked in again.
"Half-past four," said Alison, "and it's now nearly four."
"Then please see that Jessie brings in tea at five exactly."
"Why exactly?" said Alison.
"Why not?" I said. "Five is a very good hour, and it's part of my scheme."
"It's most mysterious," said Alison.
"I'll try not to," said Alison, "if it isn't too outrageous."
"Oh, no," I said, "nothing to shy at. But I might find it necessary to say something about a Worcester tea-set. Listen," I said before she could interrupt. "When you hear me say, 'Worcester tea-set' you say 'Great heavens!' or whatever women say under stress of great emotion. But sit tight. Don't go and see about it."
"See about what?"
"The Worcester tea-set, of course."
"But we haven't got one."
"My dear girl," I said, "try to imagine we have. In this little drawing-room comedy you've only one line to learn, and your cue's 'Worcester tea-set.'"
"But what's the idea?" said Alison.
"The idea," I said, "is great, but it is as well you should not know the whole plot of the piece yet. Play your one line, and I, as stage manager, will answer for the rest of the cast."
"And what's Peter got to do with it? I want him to have tea with Jessie."
"Right," I said. "Peter's part is important, but is played off--in the wings, as it were."
My interview with Peter was not a long one.
"Now look here, old pal," I said at the close, "quarter to exactly, in the bathroom."
"Right-o! Daddy." Peter has a wrist-watch already and winds it regularly, so I knew he wouldn't fail me.
At a quarter to five I was talking to Mrs. Padbury, the Rector's wife, about the doings of the various Armies in the field. I was sitting in such a position that, while seeming to attend only to her, I could keep an eye on the drawing-room clock behind her. Every detail of my scheme had been carefully arranged; it now only remained for the actors to play their ...
Crash!
"Bless my soul," I said, "that sounds remarkably like the Worcester tea-set," and looking at the clock again I knew that Peter had made the "loud noise off" at the exact moment. "Good lad," I said to myself.
"Great heavens!" said Alison.
I was delighted. I had been more afraid of Alison's getting stage fright than of anything else, and there she was playing her part like a veteran actress. Things were going really splendidly.
It was at this precise moment that the grandfather clock in the kitchen gave out the first stroke of five, and at the same moment Jessie entered bearing a tray, on which were the five drawing-room tea-cups which were intact, the single ditto with a piece out, two breakfast cups and two odd ones.
So the one player, the kitchen clock, whose part had been overlooked, had spoilt the whole show by being nearly fifteen minutes fast; and the fact that Jessie tripped on the doormat as she came in, with fatal results to the rest of our tea-things, was a mere circumstance.
Alison blames me for everything.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page