"I know, but I want Innes to be very much sought-after by five o'clock this afternoon."
Miss Hodge, who did not read Kipling-or indeed, acknowledge his existence-stared.
"For a woman who has written such a noteworthy book-Professor Beatock praised it yesterday at the University College tea-you have an extraordinarily impulsive and frivolous mind."
This defeated Lucy, who was well aware of her mental limitations. Punctured, she stood looking at Henrietta's broad back in the window.
"I am greatly afraid," Henrietta said, "that the weather is going to break. The forecast this morning was anything but reassuring, and after so long a spell of perfect summer we are due for a change. It would be a tragedy if it decided to change tomorrow of all days."
A tragedy, would it! My God, you big lumbering silly woman, it is you who have the frivolous mind. I may have a C3 intelligence and childish impulses but I know tragedy when I see it and it has nothing to do with a lot of people running to save their party frocks or the cucumber sandwiches getting wet. No, by God, it hasn't.
"Yes, it would be a pity, Henrietta," she said meekly, and went away upstairs.
She stood for a little at the landing window watching the thick black clouds massing on the horizon, and hoping evilly that tomorrow they would swamp Leys in one grand Niagara so that the whole place steamed with damp people drying like a laundry. But she noticed almost immediately the heinousness of this, and hastily revised her wish. Tomorrow was their great day, bless them; the day they had sweated for, borne bruises and sarcasm for, been pummelled, broken, and straightened for, hoped, wept, and lived for. It was plain justice that the sun should shine on them.
Besides, it was pretty certain that Mrs Innes had only one pair of «best» shoes.