Fantails by Leonora Starr

Painted Anchor. Jane and I will be with you in ten minutes,” Alison said. She and Jane went off to tidy. Logie stood motionless by the window, listening to their retreating voices “... You have the bathroom first, Janie—I must brush my suede shoes.” “All right—I shan’t be long.” A door closed. The only sounds were a bird singing in the garden and the pounding of her heart.
    Sherry came up quietly behind her, slid one arm about her, turning her to face him. “Happy?”
    She gave a little shaken laugh, holding the lapels of his coat, tilting her face to search his eyes. “Fantastically! ... Are you?”
    “What do you think?” He dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Come—we’d better order dinner or there will be only drumsticks left!”
    But drumsticks were not to be their fate this evening. The landlady of the Painted Anchor, buxom Mrs. Tebbitts, had known Logie since she was a wide-eyed baby in a pram. Sensing that celebrations were afoot and guessing at their reason, she suggested to Sherry that he should give his little party drinks in the garden until the summer visitors who thronged the dining-room had finished dinner. “Then I can serve you with a little something special!” They went to sit in deck-chairs on the lawn behind the inn, where presently Alison and Jane joined them. Mrs. Tebbitts sent out three glasses of sherry, and one of orange juice for Jane. Some twenty minutes later they were summoned to their meal. The “little something special” turned out to be lobster mayonnaise, followed by roast duckling and green peas, and Peche Melba made with fresh peaches. It was a minor tragedy that Logie’s appetite should desert her now for the first time in her life. Incredulously she found that she could only make pretence of eating.
    “Could you eat some of this?” she murmured to Jane, gazing despairingly at her generous helping of duckling. “I just don’t seem to be hungry.”
    Jane obligingly speared the largest slice of duckling and a new potato and transferred them to her own plate. “You can’t waste duckling! If that’s what being in love does to you, I just hope I’ll never get engaged!”
    The others ate and talked and laughed, while Logie answered automatically, feeling remote, as though she watched them from behind a screen of glass. “I feel exactly like a fish in an aquarium!” she thought, and wondered why, not understanding that she was suffering from the reaction of the sudden shock of happiness when Sherry, as they drove home after watching motor-boats racing on Oulton Broad, had asked abruptly after a long silence, “Logie—how about marrying me? Care to risk it?”
    It was Jane who, when they were having coffee in the garden, voiced the questions Alison longed yet did not care to ask. “Sherry, will you and Logie go to live in Yorkshire? When’re you going to be married?”
    Sherry put down his empty coffee-cup. “Those are two matters Logie must decide. As soon as she’s pronounced the verdict, Jane, I’ll let you know!”
    Alison rose. “I do think it was perfectly angelic of you two to ask me and Jane to share your first engaged meal with you, when you must be longing to make plans and talk things over! Come, Jane. Time we were heading for home.”
    They paused a moment by the open door of Mrs. Tebbitts’ office to tell her how much they had enjoyed her fare. The landlady looked up from her desk to beam at them. “Glad you enjoyed it! I somehow had a sort of feeling that it might be something of a special occasion!”
    “And you weren’t far wrong. It’s not our secret, or we’d tell you,” Alison said.
    “But the second it’s not a secret I’ll come rushing down and let you know,” Jane promised.
    Mrs. Tebbitts laughed. “Some secrets are as plain as the nose upon my face, and a lot plainer than this form I’m trying to fill up! But you can trust me not to say anything until you say the word! Good night, Miss Alison! Good night,