“We did keep on the pavements,” remarked Primula airily; and added: “Even if you don’t take us with you, you’ll have to drive us as far as the front-door.”
“I shall do nothing of the sort”—Patricia knew how easily children grow to dominate their parents—“I shall telephone Miss Merridew to fetch you, and you’ll both do half-an-hour’s extra lessons.”
“Oh, Mummy,” began Evelyn: but her mother had already stepped to the house-telephone; was ringing up for their governess,—who appeared, flustered and hatless, a few minutes afterwards; dragged the culprits back to their multiplication table.
“That woman,” thought Patricia as she returned the cleaned plug to its socket, “is a fool, an untrained fool and an expensive fool. I shall have to take on the kids’ education myself.”
She peeled off smock and wash-leather gloves; arranged toque and furs at the cracked mirror over the shelf whereon Heron Baynet’s chauffeur (long since enlisted) had kept his “spares”; cranked up; and backed the car steadily out through the folding doors. . . .
Peter had been gone nearly a fortnight. He had written her—his usual scribbles. Reading between the lines of them, her heart forgave him its wounds. But now, she too had her work to do, little time for musing.
She thought of that work as her firm hands steered the Crossley towards Endsleigh Gardens. She had been her father’s unpaying guest long enough. The sale of the Lowndes Square house made her homeless; and she was not the type of woman who could be without a home. She needed her own things about her; needed the bother and the fret and the pleasure of housekeeping. And London, with its darkness and its air-raids, was no place for children.
So Patricia’s imagination had taken unto itself a “little place in the country”; a place to which Peter could come back—on leave if his luck held, to recover if he were wounded. For that other contingency, his death and her own widowhood, even Patricia’s stout heart refused to face. . . .
She pulled up at the entrance to the hospital; jumped down from the driving-seat; slammed door behind her; ran lightly up the steps.
“Captain Gordon?” she inquired at the porter’s office.