What Happened at Hazelwood? by Michael Innes Page B

lurk unseen upon the flanks of other nice children co-operating in imaginative games. I used to practise indianing, although there were no co-operative children. I could do it quite well in heather. And now – what was uncomfortable – I did it in snow. And my object was to overhear a conversation between Bevis and Hippias.
    There they were in the shelter of our boundary wall, swathed in ulsters and perched on shooting-sticks, looking like country gentlemen in an advertisement designed to attract city clerks, and so very earnestly discoursing that the steam rose continuously from their mouths as from a pair of small, florid dragons. I guessed that they had tramped out for the sake of privacy – and this privacy I at once proceeded to violate. For their talk, I supposed, might illuminate whatever mystery the southern hemisphere had newly delivered on us; and it had come to me that if the facts were to be known I had better know them. The revelations and half-revelations of the past twelve hours or so had really come to shake me at last; I felt that there were factors of which I couldn’t estimate the gravity; and that in fuller knowledge here might be at least some shadow of power… So I got right down on my belly and indianed to a ditch, and along that I got on hands and knees to a point almost directly behind them. I think I have said that everything was coming to feel tail-end and impermanent with me – which is no doubt why I confronted with very tolerable equanimity the substantial possibility of being discovered in this untoward situation. If they liked to turn round and see Lady Simney squinnying at them from a ditch they were welcome. And meanwhile I strained my ears.
    ‘A terrible thing,’ Bevis was saying. ‘I do beg you to see, my dear fellow, that it is a terrible thing. Shocking to think of such a stain on the family name.’
    ‘Fiddle-de-dee,’ said Hippias. ‘And I don’t remember that a fellow cared to talk like a parson in my day. Every Simney is pretty well booked from birth as a stain upon the family name – even if he happens to go by the name of Owdon.’
    I think I crouched a bit lower in my ditch at this – for it seemed to confirm my uneasy suspicion that Timmy was somehow near the centre of the picture. And as I did so Hippias’ laughter went bellowing over my shoulders. It was necessary to conclude that the little matter of a bar sinister in the family amused him greatly. There was a pause.
    ‘Owdon,’ repeated Hippias relishingly. ‘It’s a dam’ good name. In fact, about as plebeian as you could find.’
    ‘In that regard,’ said Bevis, ‘it may be said that Joyleen runs it pretty close.’
    This gratuitous stroke at his daughter-in-law by no means offended Hippias. He merely bellowed with laughter again. ‘Girl’s father was certainly the first to wear boots,’ he said. ‘But pots of money, my dear boy. Just what you will be hunting for in a few years for your own brat. Particularly–’
    Bevis’ voice interrupted angrily. ‘Particularly what, damn you?’
    For a moment Hippias hesitated. ‘Particularly if his idea of earning a living consists of going after the village wenches with a paintbrush.’ Again the horrid bellow blew over me. ‘A paintbrush, heaven save the mark! When I was a lad–’
    ‘When you were a lad,’ said Bevis, ‘there were some nasty young fellows about.’
    All this was at least spirited, and I had a momentary hope that the two small, florid dragons would actually go for each other’s throats. But Hippias merely tilted himself a little further back on his shooting-stick and raised an admonitory and chronically unsteady finger. ‘Stick to the bally point, Bevis, my boy,’ he said. ‘And just try to consider what the result is going to be. Tick over the family one by one and make sure you know just how it will affect each of us.’
    ‘A most intolerable scandal!’ Bevis was evidently both alarmed and furious. ‘And in its origins,