Mrs. Lorimer's Quiet Summer by Molly Clavering

Author:Molly Clavering
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2021-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

2

Mrs. Lorimer and Miss Douglas enjoyed their picnic very much. It was delightful to get away from domestic affairs, especially after the rather extra strenuous ten days which both of them had just spent. Sitting on a grassy bank with a young river talking quietly to itself at their feet and a heather-scented breeze drifting overhead, they ate rolls stuffed with fried eggs, and digestive biscuits sandwiched with cheese, and drank coffee with far more appetite than they would have had for the meal which Colonel Lorimer and Guy were eating in the dining-room at Woodside. Secure in the knowledge that there was no one to see what they did but a few anxious sandpipers and a kestrel hovering far above them in the blue of the sky, they paddled like children until their toes were deliciously numbed by the cool running water, and then sat basking in the sun again while their feet dried. Unwillingly at last they collected their few belongings and wandered back upstream to the road where Mrs. Lorimer’s car waited to take them home.

“What a lovely day it has been, so peaceful and satisfying,” said Miss Douglas as they got in. “I wish we could do it more often, Lucy dear.”

“So do I. But perhaps we wouldn’t enjoy it so much if we could always escape whenever we liked,” said Mrs. Lorimer.

Both ladies were silent on the way home.

As they walked round the house from the garage—for according to custom Miss Douglas was going to drink a cup of tea at Woodside before she went back to her cottage—the steady soothing hum of the vacuum-cleaner came to their ears. Gray looked inquiringly at her friend.

“It’s Jack,” said Mrs. Lorimer with a smile. “He loves hoovering, and this is the first chance he has had of doing it since the family came. I thought he would be hard at it. He waits until Nan goes out into Threipford, and then hurries to the cupboard and gets it out.”

Gray laughed outright. “What an interesting man Jack is! I find out something new about him almost every time I come to Woodside. In all the years I have known you both, Lucy, I never suspected him of hoovering as a hobby. It’s really very useful of him—or is it?”

“Well, I don’t think it is useful, really,” Mrs. Lorimer said thoughtfully. “He does it so slowly and scientifically that it takes a very long time. But it amuses him, and he does clean the Hoover very thoroughly when he has finished, which is more than Nan does. She probably leaves it for him to empty now, and never bothers.”

“She doesn’t mind his doing it?”

“Oh, dear me, no. It’s just ‘the Colonel,’” said Mrs. Lorimer. “I daresay she would object if I started using the Hoover—think it a reflection on her housework or Mrs. Pringle’s. But as that contingency is never likely to arise, everything is all right. I have no desire to sweep the carpets, not even with a vacuum-cleaner.

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