Love Child by Edith Olivier

Author:Edith Olivier [Olivier, Edith]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Eight

It was the sixth of June—Agatha’s birthday, and Clarissa had always said it was hers too. If she had been, as she thought, eleven years old when she first appeared, she was now seventeen.

So to-day she had done up her hair for the first time, and Agatha’s present to her was a turquoise ring, an ornament which she was now considered old enough to wear. They sat in the garden after breakfast, and looked at it on her finger, feeling that it marked an epoch.

A motor stopped at the gate. This was unusual. They had no motoring acquaintances, and and neither of them had ever driven in any motor except the taxi which took them to and from the station at Brighton when they went there each year. This was not really surprising. It was only a mile and a half to the little country town where they and the other village people did their shopping, and it was a very-pleasant walk there, across the fields. If Agatha ever wanted to drive, she naturally supported the village cab, as her mother had always done, and as time passed it grew to look more and more as if it needed her support.

Still, motors played a large part in their lives. In the games they played together, they possessed a very comfortable motor of their own, in which they went on imaginary tours, not only into every part of England, but in France and Italy as well. They had an old chauffeur who was a great character, an obstinate man who liked to have his own way, but was nevertheless a most loyal and faithful servant. He taught Clarissa to drive, and she became a skilled and daring driver.

Still, an actual motor-car was something quite outside their usual experience, and when the car stopped, they neither of them expected that it could mean a visitor. The gate clicked. Kitty Burns ran up the drive.

Her cousin David had arrived last night in a motor, and he was taking her for a drive: she wanted to give Clarissa and Miss Bodenham the birthday treat of both coming too.

Clarissa was delighted, but Agatha thought it the most alarming birthday treat that could possibly have been proposed. David was not a professional driver; he was only a boy, not much older than Kitty and Clarissa. She knew it was most dangerous.

“But he drives splendidly,” said Kitty. “ He came more than two hundred miles yesterday, and he has won lots of races.”

This was the reverse of reassuring. Certainly one would feel less, rather than more, at ease in the village cab if a jockey held the reins, and a racing motorist was a much more desperate character than any horse jockey.

Agatha laughed nervously, and said she would prefer a more steady driver.

Then she saw Clarissa’s disappointed face, and knew that she must give in.

Clarissa leaped into the seat by the driver, while Agatha and Kitty got in behind.

The car seemed to go terribly fast, and

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