Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/344

 "I will. What's that you were strumming? Some new thing of his?"

"No. A piece of Ravel's. How are all the domestic arrangements at No. 107? Has the doctor woman?"

Her rogue's look puzzled Kit.

"We made an arrangement. My two maids are splendid women,—but somehow they and Miss Morrison could not hit it. I don't know why; so I had to suggest to the lady."

"That your two servants were of more importance."

"Well, so they are. Rather awkward telling the good woman that her own sex wanted to call a lock-out. Now—there is peace. Wynter, a throat-man, has come in instead."

He nursed a knee, and looked at Mrs. Cherry's shoes, and seemed to meditate. And then he said quite suddenly, and with an air of bright innocence—"Who do you think I saw the other day? Or—I'm sure it must have been her." Mrs. Cherry became smooth as a cat.

"Dear lad, how can I guess—if you are not sure of the identity of the person you thought you saw? Rather involved."

"Oh,—it was Molly Pentreath. She went into a shop, a dress shop; I believe she runs a shop as well as writing novels. 'Salome' was the name over the shop."

"Then it must have been Molly."

"I thought so.—By the way—who is the man?"

"What man?"

"In the shop—with his hat off—as though he belonged there?"

"My dear lad,—how should I know. Unless it was Oscar Wolffe—her partner."

"She has a partner?"

"I believe so. That is to say—the man Wolffe financed the enterprise."

"Who is he?"

"Something in the City; an insurance broker—I think."

"Not married—are they?"

"Have you forgotten 'Broken Pottery'? That's Molly Pentreath's attitude to marriage."

Christopher made some rather foolish remark about such an attitude being a pose, and Cherry, with an "O—no, my