Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp Page A

but Belinski did not seem offended. He stood looking at Andrew warily, but with something like affection.
    â€œPlease do not press me, because I feel so discourteous to refuse. For example, your parents do not know me. What you suggest is most generous, but also quite impossible.”
    â€œI don’t see why,” argued Andrew stubbornly. “You’d find it fearfully boring—”
    â€œIt is not to be thought of,” said Mr. Belinski.
    Without another word he turned and walked rapidly out of the station. But Andrew hared after him, and followed him home, and once they knew the address he and John Frewen were able to dog Mr. Belinski’s path, and argue with him in relays; and Andrew (as has been seen) went down to Devonshire to get his parents’ approval, and came back with a written invitation from Lady Carmel; and at the end of another two weeks Mr. Belinski (other factors influencing him as well) suddenly gave way, and bent once more to his erratic fate.
    III
    â€œWe’ll go down in my car,” said John Frewen. “Can Betty come too?”
    Andrew looked thoroughly horrified.
    â€œI’ll say she can’t. Last time she upset the whole house. I’m not taking home any more disturbing influences,” said Andrew righteously.

Chapter 7
    I
    One person at least welcomed this fortnight’s interval: Mrs. Maile felt she really couldn’t do with visitors until she got her staff into some sort of shape. It was no easy matter. Friars Carmel, like many another once lavish household, was still strong on the administrative side, but weak on the executive. The rôles of butler, housekeeper, cook, were all filled; but Cluny and Hilda, like a stage army, had to march round and round—now housemaids, now parlour-maids, now kitchen-maids, laundry-maids, linen-maids or tweenies. This made them very hard to discipline, for though Mrs. Maile could easily keep in her head what each of six girls ought to be doing at any given hour, two girls doing six jobs confused her sadly. When she found Hilda upstairs at noon, or Cluny peeling potatoes at tea-time, she had to go away and think things out before going back to rebuke them; by which time Cluny was probably in the pantry and Hilda in the wash-house. What particularly upset Mrs. Maile was that Cluny at least evidently took this as the normal state of affairs in a well-conducted household. She was very good-natured. But Mrs. Maile would almost have preferred a complaining expert who knew what was what.
    The two girls themselves got on very well. Cluny at once took the lead, bossed Hilda a good deal, and in return told her all about London and taught her many useful and amusing phrases. (The first time Hilda replied “Oh yeah?” to Mr. Syrett was a happy moment.) Their common bedroom was large, and they divided its conveniences meticulously, the only advantage retained by Hilda being an art-silk bedspread bought out of her own money. As a counter to this Cluny had her three photographs in their gold frame, which she stood in the centre of the mantelpiece. Hilda had no photographs as yet, because Gary was too young to take.
    Gary was her infant son, and a source of great pride to her; she wagered that when his Dad came back and saw’n him’d wed she for sure—though whether her’d wed he was another story: him’d have to mend his wild ways, said Hilda sternly, afore her went to church with’n. Hilda’s seduction by a seafarer, in fact, gave her the only consequence she was capable of, and she naturally leant on it. Cluny listened with great interest, and nearly invented an infant of her own; but Mr. Porritt’s eye, even in a photograph, restrained her. Hilda thus kept an incontestible point of superiority, which usefully checked Cluny’s instinct to domineer.
    But all this was more trouble for Mrs. Maile. Before Cluny arrived the housekeeper had instructed Hilda to suppress, on pain of