Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh Page B

will give certain reactions. Don’t they, Kettle?”
    Nurse Kettle said she supposed they did.
    “Not,” Lady Lacklander said, “that I give a damn what they think. But still…”
    She remained wrapped in moody contemplation while Nurse Kettle completed the treatment and bandaged the toe.
    “In short,” her formidable patient at last declaimed, “we can allow ourselves to be almost anything but shabbily behaved. That we’d better avoid. I’m extremely worried, Kettle.” Nurse Kettle looked up enquiringly. “Tell me, is there any gossip in the village about my grandson? Romantic gossip?”
    “A bit,” Nurse Kettle said and after a pause added, “It’d be lovely, wouldn’t it? She’s a sweet girl.
And
an heiress into the bargain.”
    “Umph.”
    “Which is not to be sneezed at nowadays, I suppose. They tell me everything goes to the daughter.”
    “Entailed,” Lady Lacklander said. “Mark, of course, gets nothing until he succeeds. But it’s not that that bothers me.”
    “Whatever it is, if I were you, I should consult Dr. Mark, Lady Lacklander. An old head on young shoulders if ever I saw one.”
    “My dear soul, my grandson is, as you have observed, in love. He is, therefore, as I have tried to point out, extremely likely to take up a high-falutin’ attitude. Besides, he’s involved. No, I must take matters into my own hands, Kettle. Into my own hands. You go past Hammer on your way home, don’t you?”
    Nurse Kettle said she did.
    “I’ve written a note to Colonel Cartarette. Drop it there like a good creature, will you?”
    Nurse Kettle said she would and fetched it from Lady Lacklander’s writing desk.
    “It’s a pity,” Lady Lacklander muttered, as Nurse Kettle was about to leave her. “It’s a pity poor George is such an ass.”
    She considered that George gave only too clear a demonstration of being an ass when she caught a glimpse of him on the following evening. He was playing a round of golf with Mrs. Cartarette. George, having attained the tricky age for Lacklanders, had fallen into a muddled, excited dotage upon Kitty Cartarette. She made him feel dangerous, and this sensation enchanted him. She told him repeatedly how chivalrous he was and so cast a glow of knight-errantry over impulses that are not usually seen in that light. She allowed him only the most meagre rewards, doling out the lesser stimulants of courtship in positively homeopathic doses. Thus on the Nunspardon golf course, he was allowed to watch, criticize and correct her swing.
    If his interest in this exercise was far from being purely athletic, Mrs. Cartarette gave only the slightest hint that she was aware of the fact and industriously swung and swung again while he fell back to observe, and advanced to adjust, her technique.
    Lady Lacklander, tramping down River Path in the cool of the evening with a footman in attendance to carry her sketching impedimenta and her shooting-stick, observed her son and his pupil as it were in pantomime on the second tee. She noticed how George rocked on his feet, with his head on one side, while Mrs. Cartarette swung, as Lady Lacklander angrily noticed, everything that a woman could swing. Lady Lacklander looked at the two figures with distaste tempered by speculation. “Can George,” she wondered, “have some notion of employing the strategy of indirect attack upon Maurice? But no, poor boy, he hasn’t got the brains.”
    The two figures disappeared over the crest of the hill, and Lady Lacklander plodded heavily on in great distress of mind. Because of her ulcerated toe she wore a pair of her late husband’s shooting boots. On her head was a battered solar topee of immense antiquity which she found convenient as an eye-shade. For the rest, her vast person was clad in baggy tweeds and a tent-like blouse. Her hands, as always, were encrusted with diamonds.
    She and the footman reached Bottom Bridge, turned left and came to a halt before a group of elders and the prospect of