Jill the Reckless | Page 9

from a Coronation to a stray cat. She was vivid. She had
sympathy. She listened to you as though you really mattered. It takes a
man of tough fibre to resist these qualities. Women, on the other hand,
especially of the Lady Underhill type, can resist them without an effort.
"Go and stir him up," said Jill, alluding to the absent Mr. Rooke. "Tell
him to come and talk to me. Where's the nearest fire? I want to get right
over it and huddle."
"The fire's burning nicely in the sitting-room, miss."
Jill hurried into the sitting-room, and increased her hold on Barker's
esteem by exclaiming rapturously at the sight that greeted her. Barker
had expended time and trouble over the sitting-room. There was no
dust, no untidiness. The pictures all hung straight; the cushions were
smooth and unrumpled; and a fire of exactly the right dimensions
burned cheerfully in the grate, flickering cosily on the small piano by
the couch, on the deep leather arm-chairs which Freddie had brought
with him from Oxford, that home of comfortable chairs, and on the
photographs that studded the walls. In the centre of the mantelpiece, the
place of honour, was the photograph of herself which she had given
Derek a week ago.
"You're simply wonderful, Barker! I don't see how you manage to

make a room so cosy!" Jill sat down on the club fender that guarded the
fireplace, and held her hands over the blaze. "I can't understand why
men ever marry. Fancy having to give up all this!"
"I am gratified that you appreciate it, miss. I did my best to make it
comfortable for you. I fancy I hear Mr. Rooke coming now."
"I hope the others won't be long. I'm starving. Has Mrs. Barker got
something very good for dinner?"
"She has strained every nerve, miss."
"Then I'm sure it's worth waiting for. Hullo, Freddie."
Freddie Rooke, resplendent in evening dress, bustled in, patting his tie
with solicitous fingers. It had been right when he had looked in the
glass in his bedroom, but you never know about ties. Sometimes they
stay right, sometimes they wriggle up sideways. Life is full of these
anxieties.
"I shouldn't touch it," said Jill. "It looks beautiful, and, if I may say so
in confidence, is having a most disturbing effect on my emotional
nature. I'm not at all sure I shall be able to resist it right through the
evening. It isn't fair of you to try to alienate the affections of an
engaged young person like this."
Freddie squinted down, and became calmer.
"Hullo, Jill, old thing. Nobody here yet?"
"Well, I'm here--the petite figure seated on the fender. But perhaps I
don't count."
"Oh, I didn't mean that, you know."
"I should hope not, when I've bought a special new dress just to
fascinate you. A creation I mean. When they cost as much as this one
did, you have to call them names. What do you think of it?"

Freddie seated himself on another section of the fender, and regarded
her with the eye of an expert. A snappy dresser, as the technical term is,
himself, he appreciated snap in the outer covering of the other sex.
"Topping!" he said spaciously. "No other word for it. All wool and a
yard wide. Precisely as mother makes it. You look like a thingummy."
"How splendid. All my life I've wanted to look like a thingummy, but
somehow I've never been able to manage it."
"A wood-nymph!" exclaimed Freddie, in a burst of unwonted imagery.
He looked at her with honest admiration. "Dash it, Jill, you know,
there's something about you! You're--what's the word?--you've got such
small bones."
"Ugh! I suppose it's a compliment, but how horrible it sounds! It makes
me feel like a skeleton."
"I mean to say, you're--you're dainty!"
"That's much better."
"You look as if you weighed about an ounce and a half. You look like a
bit of thistledown! You're a little fairy princess, dash it!"
"Freddie! This is eloquence!" Jill raised her left hand, and twiddled a
ringed finger ostentatiously. "Er--you do realize that I'm bespoke, don't
you, and that my heart, alas, is another's? Because you sound as if you
were going to propose."
Freddie produced a snowy handkerchief, and polished his eye-glass.
Solemnity descended on him like a cloud. He looked at Jill with an
earnest, paternal gaze.
"That reminds me," he said. "I wanted to have a bit of a talk with you
about that--being engaged and all that sort of thing. I'm glad I got you
alone before the Curse arrived."
"Curse? Do you mean Derek's mother? That sounds cheerful and

encouraging."
"Well, she is, you know," said Freddie earnestly. "She's a bird! It would
be idle to deny it. She always puts