LITMIR.BIZ

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Just while you’re living with us?’

      ‘Oh, yes, please. What a lovely idea…’

      ‘I heard voices,’ said the doctor from the doorway. ‘Bad dreams?’

      Peter piped up, ‘We woke up and we wanted to go home, but Mintie has explained so it’s all right, Uncle, because she’ll be here with you, and she says we can be her little brothers. She hasn’t got a brother or a sister.’

      The doctor came into the room and sat down on the other bed. ‘What a splendid idea. We must think of so many things to do that we shan’t have enough days in which to do them.’

      He began a soothing monologue, encompassing a visit to some old friends in Friesland, another to the lakes north of Utrecht, where he had a yacht, and a shopping expedition so that they might buy presents to take home…

      The boys listened, happy once more and getting sleepy. Araminta listened too, quite forgetting that she was barefoot, somewhere scantily clad in her nightie and that her hair hung round her shoulders and tumbled untidily down her back.

      The doctor had given her an all-seeing look and hadn’t looked again. He was a kind man, and he knew that the prim Miss Pomfrey, caught unawares in her nightie, would be upset and probably hate him just because he was there to see her looking like a normal girl. She had pretty hair, he reflected.

      ‘Now, how about bed?’ he wanted to know. ‘I’m going downstairs again but I’ll come up in ten minutes, so mind you’re asleep by then.’

      He ruffled their hair and took himself off without a word or a look for Araminta. It was only as she was tucking the boys up once more that she realised that she hadn’t stopped to put on her dressing gown. She kissed the boys goodnight and went away to swathe herself in that garment now, and tie her hair back with a ribbon. She would have to see that man again, she thought vexedly, because the boys had said they wouldn’t go to sleep unless she was there, but this time she would be decently covered.

      He came presently, to find the boys asleep already and Araminta sitting very upright in a chair by the window.

      ‘They wanted me to stay,’ she told him, and he nodded carelessly, barely glancing at her. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed, she thought, for he looked at her as though he hadn’t really seen her. She gave a relieved sigh. Her, ‘Goodnight, doctor,’ was uttered in Miss Pomfrey’s voice, and he wished her a quiet goodnight in return, amused at the sight of her swathed in her sensible, shapeless dressing gown. Old Jenkell had told him that she was the child of elderly and self-absorbed parents, who hadn’t moved with the times. It seemed likely that they had not allowed her to move with them either.

      Nonetheless, she was good with the boys, and so far had made no demands concerning herself. Give her a day or two, he reflected, and she would have settled down and become nothing but a vague figure in the background of his busy life.

      His hopes were borne out in the morning; at breakfast she sat between the boys, and after the exchange of good mornings, neither she nor they tried to distract him from the perusal of his post.

      Presently he said, ‘Your schedule seems very satisfactory, Miss Pomfrey. I shall be home around teatime. I’ll take the boys with me when I take Humphrey for his evening walk. The boys start school today. You will take them, please, and fetch them at noon each day. I dare say you will enjoy an hour or so to go shopping or sightseeing.’

      ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Araminta.

      Peter said, ‘Uncle, why do you call Mintie Miss Pomfrey? She’s Mintie.’

      ‘My apologies. It shall be Mintie from now on.’ He smiled, and she thought how it changed his whole handsome face. ‘That is, if Mintie has no objection?’

      She answered the smile. ‘Not in the least.’

      That was the second time he had asked her that. She had the lowering feeling that she had made so little impression upon him that nothing which they had said to each other had been interesting enough to be remembered.

CHAPTER THREE

      THE boys had no objection to going to school. It was five minutes’ walk from the doctor’s house and in a small quiet street which they reached by crossing a bridge over the canal. Araminta handed them over to one of the teachers. Submitting to their hugs, she promised that she would be there at the end of the morning, and walked back to the house, where she told Bas that she would go for a walk and look around.

      She found the Domkerk easily enough, but she didn’t go inside; the boys had told her that they would take her there. Instead she went into a church close by, St Pieterskerk, which was Gothic with a crypt and frescoes. By the time she had wandered around, looking her fill, it was time to fetch the boys. Tomorrow she promised herself that she would go into one of the museums and remember to have coffee somewhere…

      The boys had enjoyed their morning. They told her all about it as they walked back, and then demanded to know what they were going to do that afternoon.

      ‘Well, what about buying postcards and stamps and writing to your mother and father? If you know the way, you can show me where the post office is. If you show me a different bit of Utrecht each day I’ll know my way around, so that if ever I should come again…’

      ‘Oh, I ’spect you will, Mintie,’ said Paul. ‘Uncle Marcus will invite you.’

      Araminta thought this highly unlikely, but she didn’t say so. ‘That would be nice,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Let’s have lunch while you tell me some more about school.’

      The afternoon was nicely filled in by their walk to the post office and a further exploration of the neighbouring streets while the boys, puffed up with self-importance, explained about the grachten and the variety of gables, only too pleased to air their knowledge. They were back in good time for tea, and when Bas opened the door to them they were making a considerable noise, since Araminta had attempted to imitate the Dutch words they were intent on teaching her.

      A door in the hall opened and the doctor came out. He had his spectacles on and a book in his hand and he looked coldly annoyed.

      Araminta hushed the boys. ‘Oh, dear, we didn’t know you were home. If we had we would have been as quiet as mice.’

      ‘I am relieved to hear that, Miss Pomfrey. I hesitate to curtail your enjoyment, but I must ask you to be as quiet as possible in the house. You can, of course, let yourself go once you are in the nursery.’

      She gave him a pitying look. He should marry and have a houseful of children and become human again. He was fast becoming a dry-as-dust old bachelor. She said kindly, ‘We are really sorry, aren’t we, boys? We’ll creep around the house and be ourselves in the nursery.’ She added, ‘Little boys will be little boys, you know, but I dare say you’ve forgotten over the years.’

      She gave him a sweet smile and shooed the boys ahead of her up the stairs.

      ‘Is Uncle Marcus cross?’ asked Paul.

      ‘No, no, of course not. You heard what he said—we may make as much noise as we like in the nursery. There’s a piano there, isn’t there? We’ll have a concert after tea…’

      The boys liked the sound of that, only Peter said slowly, ‘He must have been a bit cross because he called you Miss Pomfrey.’

      ‘Oh, he just forgot, I expect. Now, let’s wash hands for tea and go down to the nursery. I dare say we shall have it there if your uncle is working.’

      The doctor had indeed gone back to his study, but he didn’t immediately return to his reading. He was remembering Araminta’s words with a feeing of annoyance. She had implied that he was elderly, or at least middle-aged. Thirty-six wasn’t old, not even middle-aged, and her remark had rankled. True, he was fair enough to concede, he hadn’t the lifestyle of other men of his age, and since he wasn’t married he was free

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