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The Story of Louie. Oliver Onions
Читать онлайн.Название The Story of Louie
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4057664563101
Автор произведения Oliver Onions
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
"Well, some do, and if you strike an average, or whatever it's called——"
But Richenda interrupted, softly and wearily:
"Oh, you don't, don't, don't know."
Louie asked further questions. She frowned, puzzled, at the answers. Of course Richenda herself wasn't a very effective sort of girl; if anybody had to be downtrodden it would very likely be she; but the things she was telling her now (Richenda had begun to talk again, resignedly rather than bitterly) were preposterous. There must be something wrong with Richenda, probably with her Weston too; she did not look quite right; she was very different from the rosy housemaids at Trant, for example. One hundred pounds a year! … She had forgotten all about Roy. When, presently, Richenda came as near to putting a question about him as she dared, she forgot about him again. One hundred pounds a year! … She lay on her back, her knees up, her hands behind her head, her sleeves fallen from her wonderful arms, the brows above the grey eyes knitted. She was sure that she could do better than that! She even went so far as to say so. Richenda showed no resentment.
"You've got Lord Moone behind you," she said.
"I've got a prizefighter and a public-house behind me," Louie replied.
"Yes—I know you think you know——"
Louie lay awake, still pondering it all, long after Richenda had fallen into an uneasy sleep.
On the following afternoon she met Roy by the stile again. She was restless, unsettled, she knew not what. She spoke almost sharply to him.
"I'm not going to stand here with you," she said; "that's twice I've been seen. Come down the hill."
Roy no longer urged the Rules. They walked together a hundred yards down the hill, and sat down under a gorse-bush. He made her move quite behind it, and even then tucked her skirt a little farther out of the gaze of a possible passer-by.
"Now we're all right," he said. "How's Lovey this morning?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen her."
"Well, don't bite a fellow's head off, Louie."
"Then don't bother me to-day.—No, I don't want my hand held."
"What's the matter with you?"
"If you don't leave me alone I shall go. I didn't sleep till nearly daylight."
"I didn't sleep for quite an hour, either," he said sympathetically. "I say, isn't it funny, Louie, when you come to think of it, that till a week ago I hadn't thought of you for years?"
"Oh, I wasn't lying awake thinking of you," she said bluntly.
"I was of you." He put out his hand again.
His approach only made her impatient. "Oh, don't!" she snapped. "Really I shall get up and go if you worry me."
He was, as he would have put it, "keen": keen enough to begin to sulk. She let him sulk, and watched the sea, always of a milky bloom, and the sky, still of the hue of an infant's eyeball. After some minutes she turned to him again.
"What do people get paid?" she asked abruptly.
"What people?" He spoke over his shoulder.
"Oh, people—you know what I mean!"
"We get dashed little, I know that." (He was going into the army.) "What sort of people? Servants and those?"
"And those—yes."
Roy expounded.
"Jolly good pay, I call it; lot of lazy beggars! Why, the fellow down there wanted to charge me two pounds for patching up that centre-board, that I did in about a day. I shouldn't mind getting two pounds a day! … Why?"
"I want to know."
"Some of your gardeners been grizzling to you?"
"No."
"A wonder—rotten grousing lot! They ought to have uniforms to buy, and mess-bills and clubs and things; they'd know all about it then! Two pounds for filing a piece of iron and putting a patch on a piece of wood!—I think it will hold all right," he continued naïvely; "we shall make a deuce of a lot of leeway if it doesn't. We're flat-bottomed, you see, with only bilge-keels, and that reminds me; Izzard's coming back on Wednesday; I'd a note from him this morning. But he won't be in the way, dear, if you'll only be friends——"
She could not help laughing. After all, Richenda's "grousing" was a little spoiling her fun. She turned to him again.
"I haven't seen her yet," she said. "Let's go down to her now."
He chuckled mildly. "You do play the dickens with the Rules, Louie."
"Bother the Rules!"
"Well, you don't want to go just this minute; it's jolly here——"
This time she did not withdraw her hand.
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