Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/233

 "To study?"

"The language, and other things. I don't want to loaf all through the Long Vac."

"You mustn't work too hard."

"What a fool saying," he thought, and just stared at her.

"The pater had to work pretty hard. Besides, it's the best thing. He and I understand each other."

"That must be very nice for you."

There was a pause, and Christopher sat through this pause in the conversation with a seeming stolidity that neither helped nor thwarted her. His mother's animation reasserted itself. He listened, with the appearance of an attentive young foreigner who was unable to understand the language she was using. He was not sorry for her. She was no more than a stranger who was trying to produce an effect, and instinctively he resisted, though his resistance was passive. He was wise as to her intention; though he could not disentangle all her motives, but his feeling was that she had made up her mind to win him over, and he did not mean to be won over.

His mother was growing irritated, but was able to hide it, and when a young thing in an amber-coloured frock floated into the room, Mrs. Duggan arose with enthusiasm and kissed her.

"Kit, this is Lola,—Miss Lola Merrindin."

Kit stood up, and bent stiffly at the hips, and his smile was vague. He was aware of Lola Merrindin as a very attractive creature, one of those slim, black, highly mobile young women with a brilliant white skin and gazelle's eyes. Her hair had a slight kink in it. Her nose spread its eager nostrils with some breadth above a capacious red mouth. She smiled a great deal and showed very white teeth. She was intensely alive, and she was never still, flicking herself into varying postures and evanescent expressions, getting up and sitting down, laughing and then looking out under her brilliant forehead with elfish and half-sullen solemnity.

Mrs. Duggan left them together.

"Amuse him, darling. I must go and tidy up. Fluffy will be here any minute."

It was Kit's first experience of this particular type of young woman, and he sat there and surveyed her with an air of polite suspicion. He had a feeling that she was too