The Moon out of Reach | Page 2

out her hand for the matches and lit a
cigarette. Then she blew a cloud of speculative smoke into the air.
"I don't know," she said slowly. Adding whimsically: "I believe that's
the root of the trouble."
Penelope regarded her critically.
"I'll tell you what's the matter," she returned. "During the war you lived
on excitement--"
"I worked jolly hard," interpolated Nan indignantly.
The other's eyes softened.
"I know you worked," she said quickly. "Like a brick. But all the same
you did live on excitement--narrow shaves of death during air-raids,
dances galore, and beautiful boys in khaki, home on leave in
convenient rotation, to take you anywhere and everywhere. You felt
you were working for them and they knew they were fighting for you,

and the whole four years was just one pulsing, throbbing rush. Oh, I
know! You were caught up into it just the same as the rest of the world,
and now that it's over and normal existence is feebly struggling up to
the surface again, you're all to pieces, hugely dissatisfied, like everyone
else."
"At least I'm in the fashion, then!"
Penelope smiled briefly.
"Small credit to you if you are," she retorted. "People are simply
shirking work nowadays. And you're as bad as anyone. You've not tried
to pick up the threads again--you're just idling round."
"It's catching, I expect," temporised Nan beguilingly.
But the lines on Penelope's face refused to relax.
"It's because it's easier to play than to work," she replied with grim
candour.
"Don't scold, Penny." Nan brought the influence of a pair of appealing
blue eyes to bear on the matter. "I really mean to begin work--soon."
"When?" demanded the other searchingly.
Nan's charming mouth, with its short, curved upper lip, widened into a
smile of friendly mockery.
"You don't expect me to supply you with the exact day and hour, do
you? Don't be so fearfully precise, Penny! I can't run myself on railway
time-table lines. You need never hope for it."
"I don't"--shortly. Adding, with a twinkle: "Even I'm not quite such an
optimist as that!"
As she spoke, Penelope laid down her sewing and stretched cramped
arms above her head.

"At this point," she observed, "the House adjourned for tea. Nan, it's
your week for domesticity. Go and make tea."
Nan scrambled up from the hearthrug obediently and disappeared into
the kitchen regions, while Penelope, curling herself up on a cushion in
front of the fire, sat musing.
For nearly six years now she and Nan had shared the flat they were
living in. When they had first joined forces, Nan had been at the
beginning of her career as a pianist and was still studying, while
Penelope, her senior by five years, had already been before the public
as a singer for some considerable time. With the outbreak of the war,
they had both thrown themselves heartily into war work of various
kinds, reserving only a certain portion of their time for professional
purposes. The double work had proved a considerable strain on each of
them, and now that the war was past it seemed as though Nan, at least,
were incapable of getting a fresh grip on things.
Luckily--or, from some points of view, unluckily--she was the recipient
of an allowance of three hundred a year from a wealthy and benevolent
uncle. Without this, the two girls might have found it difficult to
weather the profitless intervals which punctuated their professional
engagements. But with this addition to their income they rubbed along
pretty well, and contrived to find a fair amount of amusement in life
through the medium of their many friends in London.
Penelope, the elder of the two by five years, was the daughter of a
country rector, long since dead. She had known the significance of the
words "small means" all her life, and managed the financial affairs of
the little ménage in Edenhall Mansions with creditable success.
Whereas Nan Davenant, flung at her parents' death from the shelter of a
home where wealth and reckless expenditure had prevailed, knew less
than nothing of the elaborate art of cutting one's coat according to the
cloth. Nor could she ever be brought to understand that there are only
twenty shillings in a pound--and that at the present moment even
twenty shillings were worth considerably less than they appeared to be.
There are certain people in the world who seem cast for the part of

onlooker. Of these Penelope was one. Evenly her life had slipped along
with its measure of work and play, its quiet family loves and losses,
entirely devoid of the alarums and excursions of which Fate shapes the
lives of some. Hence she had developed the talent of the looker-on.
Naturally of an observant turn of mind, she had learned to penetrate the