Page 41 - English_Spark_8

In the deepening twilight three figures were

walking across the lawn towards the window,
they all carried guns under their arms, and

one of them was
additionally burdened with a white coat

hung over his shoulders. A tired brown
spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly

they neared the house, and then a hoarse
young voice chanted out of the dusk: ‘‘I said,

Bertie, why do you bound?’’
Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat;

the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front
gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the, road

had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
‘‘Here we are, my dear,’’ said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through

the window, ‘‘fairly muddy but most of it is dry. Who was that who bolted out as we
came up?’’

“A most extraordinary man, a Mr Nuttel,’’ said Mrs Sappleton; ‘‘could only talk about his
illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology when you arrived. One

would think he had seen a ghost.’’
“I expect it was the spaniel,’’ said the

niece calmly: ‘‘he told me he had a
horror of dogs. He was once hunted

into a cemetery somewhere on the
banks of the Ganges by a pack of

pariah dogs, and had to spend the
night in a newly dug grave with the

creatures snarling and grinning
and foaming just above him. Enough

to make anyone lose his nerve.”
Romance at short notice was her

speciality.

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