04 Young Renny by Mazo de La Roche

Author:Mazo de La Roche
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2009-06-28T23:00:00+00:00

"0 Malahide -"

Now you go on."

"I can't abide,"

he added at once.

"Good!" she exclaimed.

He knit his brows. "I can't think of anything else."

"Of course you can! You must."

He proceeded, with a scowl: -

Meg carried on triumphantly: -

"You are a snide!"

Renny uttered a snort of delight. "Go on, go on," he implored, "while you're in the vein!"

With an exalted expression she concluded: -

Renny's lips were stretched in a grin of approval.

"Now let me say it over from the beginning." But she could not repeat it for laughing. She buried her face in her bolster and he laid her pillow on her head to smother the sound of her mirth. "What a one you are for laughing!" he said, but he was pleased with her.

A bat flew in at the window and began its naked, black dance, soft and punctual, up and down the room.

Meg sat up and stared at it from the ambush of her sheet.

"Oh, put it out! Oh, kill it!" she said in an anguished whisper. "If it gets into my hair it must be cut off!"

Renny caught up a towel, folded it into a weapon, and tiptoed, lean and silent, after the bat. It flitted always where he was not, like the spirit of opportunity, the answer to desire.

"Ha, I've got you!" he said, again and again, but when he raised his weapon the bat was pirouetting with its shadow against the ceiling.

"Oh, mind the lamp!" she cried, as the flapping towel snatched the air from the glass and the flame sank and the smoke poured up through the lamp chimney. But the lamp did not go out. The flame rose again to show her Renny triumphant, holding the bat in a little nest in the towel.

"Want to see it?" he asked.

"No, no," she answered, shrinking, but in spite of herself had to peer fearfully at it nipped between his finger and thumb. From out of the towel its evil face peered back at her. Its body swelled with spite.

"It's a return gift," said Renny, "for Cousin Malahide."

With the hair brushes in one hand and the bat concealed in the towel, he stole from the room and rapped softly on Malahide's door.

It opened, and Malahide appeared clad in a black silk dressing gown, open to the waist. His neck, without the high collar, was smooth as ivory. On his breast was a patch of glossy black hair.

"Cousin Renny!" he exclaimed. "I'm so glad to see you! Come in! Did you like my present?"

"So well," said Renny, with a bitter grin, "that I've brought you one in return!"

He stepped into the room, laid the brushes on the dressing table, and, with a bold gesture, released the bat. It danced from its captivity, ugly as fate, and circled above their heads.

Renny slid swiftly out of the room and closed the door behind him.

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