Crooked Wreath by Christianna Brand

disinherit us with this evening!”
    â€œTell them I’ll bring it down to him,” said Ellen, unexpectedly. Her quick maternal ear caught the sound of her baby’s weeping, and she ran upstairs, the pen still in her hand. Half an hour later, Bella and Peta, returning from the lodge, met her sauntering across the lawn towards it, the pen a vivid note against her brief red bathing-dress. “If she thinks she’s going to talk Grandfather round,” said Peta a little bitterly, having just failed to do so herself, “she won’t manage it in that! There’s too much of Ellen to get away with too little of a bathing-dress; it looks as if it had been varnished on, and some of the varnish had chipped.” The futile sacrifice of the ox’s blood was still a sore point.
    Edward was on the terrace in untidy flannels and a white shirt. “Will this do for dinner, Bella? Philip’s gone in to do likewise. I say, what’s Ellen up to? She’s gone off to the lodge with a look of grim determination on her face; target for tonight isn’t in it!”
    â€œWe think she’s going to have a Straight Talk with Grandfather; but she’s an idiot to go in a tummyless bathing-dress.”
    â€œLet’s go and make faces outside the window and put her off,” suggested Edward, promptly.
    Peta thought this a delightful suggestion and would have turned back immediately, but was hustled into the house by Bella with instructions to put on something for dinner because her bathing-dress was worse than Ellen’s, only Peta was thin. “Heaven knows what stories the Turtle tells about you all down in the village!” Edward went off down to the lodge by himself. Ellen, however, was already leaving, walking along, a little bouncing in the tummyless bathing costume, down the sanded path. She said, taking his arm: “Where are you dashing off to?”
    â€œI was dashing off to this very spot, actually, to jump up and down outside the window and make you giggle in the middle of your Straight Talk with Grandfather.”
    Ellen laughed. “I never felt less like giggling in my life! It’s as gloomy as a morgue in there!–he says the sun on the window makes it like an oven, and he’s drawn the curtains across and shut out all the light; and he’s in a filthy temper, I can tell you! I tried to point out to him that it was all too silly and I didn’t mind in the least if Philip left me for Claire, but what I really couldn’t stick was this sort of half-and-half business, but, of course, he wouldn’t listen. He says it’s our attitude to the whole affair that he minds, and that we have no sense of decency.”
    â€œHe meant your bathing-dress, I expect.”
    Ellen glanced down nonchalantly at her well-rounded diaphragm. “Can I help it if my figure won’t stay utility to fit the rubbish the government sells us now?”
    Brough appeared from the sanded path which led to the front door, dragging a little garden roller behind him; he touched his cap to them and moved round to the back. Edward moved forward to pass her and go up to the French window, with its drawn curtain. “As I’m fully clothed, and practically sub -utility as far as fat’s concerned, perhaps I could make more impression!” But she caught again at his arm. “I wouldn’t go, Teddy, honestly I wouldn’t. He won’t pay the slightest attention to you and you’ll only go into an automatic trance or something and make things worse. Come back to the house with me; it must be nearly dinner time anyway.” As he hesitated, she changed the subject and uttered the magic words: “How do you feel today, after your faint this morning?” He turned back immediately and went with her.
    That evening they sat on the terrace looking down to the river and away from the lodges, tenderly nursing their sunburn and all very silent after the rather