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Leone had given them the slip, in company with Yoichim.
"I'm not worrying," said Chris, as if he read her thoughts. "Yoichim understands Leone.
He has known her since she was a little girl, and he thinks the world of her. Sit down,
Carline, on that seat, if it's not too cold for you."
It was not too cold, she assured him, noticing the buds on the rhododendrons and the
daffodil leaves that pierced the grass already. Blackbirds and
thrushes were busy, and the willows showed golden against the dark green of firs and
hollies.
"I can almost smell the spring," said Chris, and he smiled like a boy. "Do you know,
Carline, these gardens were my father's escape place. When he spoke of them, he
had that same look in his eyes that you have when you talk of your native hills. Father
came here to think out his problems and to rest and rejuvenate himself."
"And you shall do the same," Carline thought to herself. Later on, in springtime and
summer, these gardens would be a little paradise for Chris if he could be prevailed
upon to use them. On the way home, she planned to write for the required permission,
though she feared Chris wouldn't like her sending the guinea that was demanded.
Possibly he would do it himself, she thought, and decided to ask him about it, but not
this evening. Leone's remarks of the morning still rankled and Carline did not propose
to bestow her company upon Christopher this Sunday evening.
After tea, Yoichim announced that with Christopher's permission, he was taking Leone
to see a film, and Mrs. Burdock went off to church. Carline went up to her room to write
her weekly letter home, but she had scarcely got beyond "Dearest Father and Mother"
when Veller tapped upon her door to say that Christopher requested her presence.
Chris was not alone, for a little girl was sitting on the floor by his side, playing shop with
a toy grocery store, Chris acting as the customer.
"This is Cathie," he said. "Maybe you would like to buy some provisions at her shop,
Carline, only first of all I wondered if you would be kind enough to make a telephone
call for me."
Cathie, it seemed, was Mrs. Veller's niece, visiting for the day with her mother from
their home in Hertfordshire. Cathie was four years old, brown-haired and rosy-
cheeked, with wide, wondering grey eyes. Her mother cherished the ambition to see
Cathie's photograph in the magazines, and Chris wanted Carline to telephone to ask
Aldin to come
round at once and consider the child as a model for the firm's spring collections.
Carline agreed to do so with secret reluctance, feeling afraid Aldin might think she was
making the pretext to ring him because he hadn't come to see them. She dialled the
number, Aldin's voice answered and she made her request.
"My dear, I'm sorry, but no can do," he said. "I have two friends with me and I'm taking
them out to supper."
"That's all right then. I'll tell Chris."
Carline was about to ring off when Aldin's voice recalled her, urgently.
"I tell you what, Carline, you ring up for a taxi and come round and join us. I'll be down
at the street entrance to meet you, and you'll like my friends. Jan is a doctor and his
wife used to be something in your line. Janet was a speech therapist before her
marriage. They are only in town for the weekend, and they rang up unexpectedly,
otherwise I should have been round to see you long before this."
The invitation sounded attractive, but Carline declined it. Cathie and her mother were
leaving shortly, and Mr. and Mrs. Veller wouldn't like to go out together to see them off
at the station if it meant leaving Chris alone in the house.
Chris made no remark when she told him that Aldin couldn't come, but his expression
was eloquent and he might as well have said aloud that Aldin was behaving exactly as
he had expected. They played together with Cathie until her mother came in to say
goodbye, holding her up to kiss Chris. Evidently the child had been told that she was
not to scramble up on to his knees, but she put her arms round his neck with a sweet
simplicity that was reminiscent of Leone, as Chris must have thought, for he told
Cathie's mother that Leone had been a child model for their own firm when she was
tiny and had ever since cherished the ambition to make modelling her career.
Cathie should have her chance, he promised, whereupon the child waved to him from
the doorway
and unburdened herself of the question which had all along been perplexing her.
"Haven't you got no legs at all, Mr. Chris?" said Cathie.
There was an instant's horrified pause, and then the child's mother picked her up and
retreated apologetically from the room. Chris was laughing, Carline was smiling and
secretly willing herself to seize the moment as tactfully as she could. Cathie's pertinent
question had given her her cue.
"Chris," she began tentatively. "I can't help it if I'm like Cathie, but I've been wondering,
too. Don't you ever feel anything in your legs, I mean?"
"I prefer not to discuss the subject," said Chris shortly.
"I just thought of the way you got back the use of your right arm so perfectly. I
wondered if anything was happening to your nerves, something in your spine, perhaps.
You haven't felt any kind of feeling in your legs, I suppose, even the tiniest tingle?"
Christopher looked at her stonily.
"Carline, if you are trying to get at me, I won't have it. I won't play, do you understand?
Why didn't Alvin come, by the by?"
"He had friends with him and he was taking them out to a meal," said Carline.
"A girl, I take it."
Carline nodded absently, a teasing whimsy disinclining her to tell Chris that Aldin's
friends were a young married couple and that she herself had been invited to join
them.
"Carline," said Chris. "I've no right to ask you this, but I couldn't help feeling curious
this morning when you said you had taken out an insurance policy on your heart. Did
you mean that there's someone else? Perhaps you are engaged already, one of these
private understandings that isn't announced yet, so that you don't wear a ring to warn
people like Aldin to keep off the grass?"
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