Plantation Doctor by Kathryn Blair Page B

of premonition in her own thoughts. Shouldn’t she cut right away, get out at once, even if it meant waiting in Freetown for a boat? Wasn’t that the more sensible procedure? But this reversal in her affairs was so sudden and bewildering.
    “We don’t live richly,” Hazel murmured suggestively. “If you felt you ought to contribute a little towards housekeeping, you could, though it isn’t necessary. The house, such as it is, is Claud’s and almost our only bills are for food and the servant, and they don’t amount to much.”
    “Hazel, you’re sweet.”
    “I know I am. Is the answer yes?”
    “I can’t quite decide. Let’s put it to Claud.”
    Hazel smiled. “I know his reply. Claud won’t let you go. I vote we have a bottle of wine at lunch to celebrate.”
    Claud, when he came, endorsed Hazel’s proposition with gusto. Since his sister’s arrival the bungalow was the target for every bachelor within twenty miles.
    “What will happen when it gets around that I have two darling honey-pots under one roof I daren’t imagine,” he exclaimed, “but I promise you we’ll have fun, Lyn, my pigeon.”
    He popped the cork from the bottle of wine and filled the glasses. It seemed to have escaped both him and Hazel that Mrs. Latimer had met a lonely and ghastly death. No doubt their viewpoint — that the woman was just another fever victim and was the less to be mourned because she had sat up and begged for it — was sane, but Lyn had come to think of her as a person of courage and a wide humanity, someone to whom she would, in time, come close. She sipped at her drink, but not with pleasure.
    “When will you move in with us?” Hazel was presently anxious to know. “Claud can take you back this afternoon and hang on while you pack if you like. He’ll even give you a hand.”
    “That’s too soon. Don’t you think I should wait till Dr. Sinclair returns?”
    “We don’t,” said Claud flatly. “Adrian doesn’t care a button for anything but his job. At the moment you’re part of that job, a part he won’t mind being relieved of, I rather fancy. I don’t mean to be unflattering, my dear one,” he added with a charming smile and a blown kiss. “It’s Adrian’s loss if he doesn’t appreciate your freshness and youth — and very much our gain. Do make it today, Lyn.”
    But on that point Lyn was stubborn. She would take her time, let it become known throughout the settlement that her prospective employer had died and then move out casually either late tomorrow or early the following day. She felt sure that that was what would be expected of her.
    She said, “You haven’t room anywhere for Melia, have you — until she finds another post?”
    “We have a sort of cubby-hole full of rubbish. We could clear it out and borrow a bed. I’m sure it will be as good as anything she’s been accustomed to. No quibbling, Lynn,” warned Hazel. “It’s settled.”
    When Lyn got back to Denton late that afternoon she did not at once tell Melia of her plans. Here, among the sedate white houses with their wide, thatched roofs and orderly flower-beds, she was a little unnerved at the thought of walking out and into a home in Palmas. She needed reassurance that she was doing the right thing from someone other than the Merricks.
    So when she had washed and changed she made her way along to the Bairds. John, busier because Adrian’s absence made him the doctor of small ailments, had not yet come in, but Rosita was in her lounge, rather startlingly attired in an emerald off-the-shoulder creation.
    The manager’s wife looked u p from counting out table napkins, and with unconscious ostentation she set the linen aside behind the gramophone, as if what she was doing were of no moment. Lyn would have liked to assure her that she did not mind being excluded from the dinner party but one could never quite get to the point with Rosita; there was too much artificiality to penetrate. She smiled and stayed near the