(11/20) Farther Afield by Miss Read

full of booths selling straw hats, and bags, and some pretty fearful souvenirs. I couldn't see Mrs Clark settling there after the green and pleasant purlieus of Surrey.
    'What's her reaction?' I asked.
    'Unusually forceful, which I drink's a good thing. He's gone a little too far a little too quickly, and while she was really doing her best to meet him halfway a week ago, now she's beginning to get much tougher.'
    'What a problem! I only hope they don't fall out permanently. They seem so fond of each other, that I can't see them getting too vicious over this affair.'
    'I'm sure they'll find some solution. Evidently, she now stipulates that nothing is bought outright until they have lived in the place for a few months, and can see how they like it.'

    'Seems sensible. So he's agreed to rent something?'
    'I don't know. The difficulty is that people move step by step into awkward positions, and then won't swallow their pride and climb down.'
    'Too true.'
    'Look at James. I really can't believe that he wants to spend the rest of his life with this girl. She'll bore him to tears by the end of the year.'
    'You know her then?' I was taken by surprise. Amy had said so little about the girl that I had jumped to the conclusion that James had met her somewhere on his travels.
    'I've met her a few times in James's office. She's one of his typists. Perfectly nice child, I imagine, but should be flirting with some cheerful young man at her local tennis club or dramatic society – not ogling her boss.'
    Amy stubbed out a cigarette viciously among the thymy grass.
    'If this had happened twenty or thirty years ago,' she went on, 'I should have tackled it quite differently.
    'I keep remembering my Aunt Winifred who coped with much the same situation when she was my age. Did I ever tell you about it?'
    'No,' I said, settling comfortably for a domestic saga. 'Tell on.'
    'Well, soon after I left college I had a couple of years at a rather nice school near Highbury. As my Aunt Winifred lived close by, my parents, after much heart-searching, asked her if I might stay there as a P.G.
    'She was a game old girl, and had no children of her own, and said of course I must stay there, which I did, going home at weekends. Incidentally, she refused to take a penny in rent which made my upright parents most uncomfortable, but there it was.
    'My uncle Peter was an accountant – perhaps book-keeper is nearer the mark – at one of the good London stores, Harrods or Jacksons, something of the sort. He caught the 8.10 train every morning and came into the house between 6.30 and 7 every evening. He was very sweet and gentle, and always brought us a cup of tea in bed in the mornings, and spent his spare time pottering about in his greenhouse.
    'Imagine then, the horror when he calmly asked Aunt Winifred if she would kindly remove herself as he wished to bring home " a very lady-like girl" - I can hear my poor Aunt Win mimicking his tone to this day – whom he hoped to marry as soon as he and Aunt Winifred could get a divorce.
    'I was not present, naturally, at this scene, but heard all about it from my aunt some time later.'
    'What on earth did she do?'
    'You'll be amazed. As amazed as I was, all those years ago, I expect. She told me this with a smile of such self-satisfaction on her face that I was rendered speechless at the time. It seems that she had been left a small legacy by a godfather not long before. Something in the region of two hundred pounds. When she was telling me this, I remember thinking: "Oh, what a good tiring! She could make a start somewhere else!" But I realised that she was telling me that she decided to use the money "to win him back". She proposed to ignore his suggestion completely, but do you know what she did?'
    'Bought him back with two hundred?'
    'As near as! She blew the lot on having her hair dyed and re-styled. She bought masses of new clothes. She had a face-lift and heaven knows what else. Then she calmly waited for him to