The Young Intruder by Eleanor Farnes Page B

following the line of his new thoughts, thought that it would not be a bad thing at all, this between them. It might help Douglas to get well more quickly. It would provide a new and great interest for both of them.
     

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    THE following day, Alison discovered that Douglas already had a wheel chair suitable for the streets, and declared her intention of taking him into the park that afternoon. She overrode his protests, and, with Thomas’s help, set off along the pavement. “Of course,” she said, “if I can’t negotiate the kerbs, we shall just have to go round and round the block; so look out, Douglas, for all the shallow ones.” And this set the right tone, made a bit of an adventure of it, and relieved it of embarrassment for him. Alison felt none. She was only glad that she could do something to lighten the burden of his days; and she was convinced that he looked better and brighter on their return.
    That evening, after dinner, Peter carried her off to the little morning room on the ground floor, to have the serious talk with her. He said:
    “You have been with us almost a month, Alison.”
    “Yes,” she said. “A long time.”
    “All too short,” he said courteously, “but perhaps long enough for you to have made up your mind what you would like to do.”
    She looked a little troubled.
    “You see,” she said, “I have so few qualifications. I have four languages, all fluent. I thought perhaps I could teach languages in a girls’ school.”
    “You don’t quite understand me,” said Peter. “I am not suggesting you should leave us. I am hoping you will stay, but I wanted to give you time to find out if you would like to live with us.”
    “Live with you? No, I don’t quite understand. Do you mean that I could get a job, and still make this my home?”
    “No. I will tell you plainly what I do suggest. I suggest, Alison, that I make you my ward, and that you live here permanently as a member of the family.”
    She looked at him with wide, astonished eyes.
    “But why?” she asked. “Why should you do this? I have no claim on you, and I’m sure Mother did not have such a thing in mind when she wrote to you.”
    “No. I know that. But I think what you do not know, Alison, is how much I owed to your parents. Would you like to hear about it?”
    “Please,” she said.
    “I’ll have to go a long way back: to before the war, when I was very young and much too serious. My parents were very, very strict. They were Quakers. Have you ever noticed how often Quakers seem to succeed in business, and amass fortunes? Well, my father was one of them. He was wealthy and he used his money for many good causes, but he never enjoyed it. Nor did he intend that I should. I received no privileges. I started at the bottom of the business and went through all the departments, without favour of any kind. When I started I had a week’s holiday in the year. Going rather far, don’t you think? It gradually increased, until, the year that I had three weeks, I decided to go abroad; and with some idea of improving myself, I set off for Italy with a massive guidebook, and began doing the cathedrals and art galleries and so on.
    “Oh, Alison, you can’t imagine what a very dull young man I must have been. It was a wonder that your parents saw anything in me at all. But, bless them, they did. I met them in a very off-the-beaten-track Italian village, when they rescued me from some language difficulties. They asked me to have a meal with them, and when they heard what I was doing, they began, most enthusiastically, to make out a list of the really interesting places to see and things to do. And they said that if I took their advice and went the following week to the opera at La Scala, I must call on them at their hotel.
    “I did, and that started a friendship which filled my life with colour. They introduced me to vivid, strange, colourful people: to serious music and opera: to beautiful places. They