Thrush Green by Miss Read

and finding it heavy going.
    Ella Bembridge was a formidably hearty spinster of fifty-five who had lived, with a wilting friend of much the same age, in a small cottage on the Lulling corner of Thrush Green, for the past ten years. It was generally agreed that Ella ruled the roost and that "poor Miss Dean" had a pretty thin time of it.
    Deborah Dean had been nicknamed Dimity, so long ago that the reason for the diminutive had been lost in the mists of time. Now, at the age of fifty-odd, the name was pathetically incongruous, calling up as it did someone fresh, compact and sparkling, with an air of crisp, but old-world, domesticity. Dimity nowadays resembled a washed-out length of gray chiffon, for she was a drooping attenuated figure with lank mouse-gray looks and a habit of dressing in shapeless frocks, incorporating unpressed pleats and draped bodices, in depressingly drab shades. Dr. Lovell, who knew both women slightly, suspected that she was browbeaten by the dominating Ella now before him, and would have liked to try the effects of an iron tonic on Dimity's languid pallor.

    He was beginning to wonder just how quickly he could bring Miss Bembridge's monologue to a close. She had come to consult him about a skin complaint affecting her hands and arms.
    "I said to Dimity, 'Looks like shingles to me. Better go and see the medico, I suppose, for all the good that'll do!'" Here Miss Bembridge laughed roguishly and Dr. Lovell felt positive that she would have dug him painfully in the ribs had not the large desk providentially stood between them. He gave a faint smile in acknowledgment of this witticism, and glanced across the shimmering summer glory of Thrush Green to the Bassetts' house.
    Miss Bembridge followed his gaze.
    "I thought I might have picked up something from young Paul. Dim and I were there to tea a day or two ago and then the little horror came out in some repulsive rash or other. Not that I'm saying a word against Ruth! Heaven knows she's had enough to put up with, and naturally her mind is full of things other than a child's rash, but I do think it was just the teeniest bit careless to invite us there when the child was infectious."
    Dr. Lovell rose impatiently. His lean young face still wore a polite professional smile, but it was a little strained.
    "Paul's rash," he said steadily, "did not appear until after your tea party. I was called in as soon as it was found." He felt his dislike of this tough ungainly woman growing minute by minute. She had sat there for almost a quarter of an hour, her massive legs planted squarely apart to display the sturdiest pair of knickers it had ever been Dr. Lovell's misfortune to observe. In shape and durability they had reminded the young man of his father's Norfolk breeches used in the early days of cycling, and the silk shirt and Liberty tie added to the masculine impression.
    It was an odd thing, mused Dr. Lovell, that it was Ella who was the artistic one of the pair. Dimity ran the house, it appeared, and it was her slender arms that bore in the coal scuttles, the heavy shopping baskets and the laden trays, while Ella's powerful hands designed wood blocks, mixed paint and stamped the lengths of materials which draped their little cottage.
    Occasionally Ella took the train to town with a portfolio of hand-blocked patterns, and usually she returned, blown but jubilant, with a few orders from firms who appreciated her strong shapes of olive green, dull beetroot and dirty yellow madly ensnared in black mesh. It was the paint, Dr. Lovell had surmised, which was causing the present rash on his patient's hands, and he had given her a prescription for a curative lotion and recommended the use of rubber gloves for a few days, while handling her artistic materials. She had clutched the prescription in a pink spotty hand and had continued to sit stolidly in the chair. Poor Dr. Lovell, who was not yet completely versed in getting rid of lingering patients, resigned himself to