Good Old Anna | Page 2

Marie Belloc Lowndes
your good old
Anna should be thinking, for instance, of going back to Germany--she
knew some one who she thought would suit you admirably. It's a
woman who was cook in a very good London place, and whose health
has rather given way."
Miss Forsyth spoke with what was for her unusual animation.
As is always the way with your active, intelligent philanthropist, she
was much given to vicarious deeds of charity. At the same time she
never spared herself. Her own comfortable house always contained one
or more of the odd-come-shorts whom she had not managed to place
out in good situations.
Again a wave of resentment swept over Mrs. Otway. This was really
too much!
"How would such a woman as you describe--a cook who has been in a
good London place, and who has lost her health--work into our--mine
and Rose's--ways? Why, we should both be afraid of such a woman!
She would impose on us at every turn. If you only knew, dear Miss
Forsyth, how often, in the last twenty years, I have thanked God--I say
it in all reverence--for having sent me my good old Anna! Think what
it has been to me"--she spoke with a good deal of emotion--"to have in
my tiny household a woman so absolutely trustworthy that I could
always go away and leave my child with her, happy in the knowledge
that Rose was as safe with Anna as she was with me----"
Her voice broke, a lump came into her throat, but she hurried on:

"Don't think that it has all been perfect--that I have lain entirely on a
bed of roses! Anna has been very tiresome sometimes; and, as you
know, her daughter, to whom I was really attached, and whom I
regarded more or less as Rose's foster-sister, made that unfortunate
marriage to a worthless London tradesman. That's the black spot in
Anna's life--I don't mind telling you that it's been a blacker spot in mine
than I've ever cared to admit, even to myself. The man's always getting
into scrapes, and having to be got out of them! Why, you once helped
me about him, didn't you? and since then James Hayley actually had to
go to the police about the man."
"Mr. Hayley will be busier than ever now."
"Yes, I suppose he will."
And then the two ladies, looking at one another, smiled one of those
funny little smiles which may mean a great deal, or nothing at all.
James Hayley, the son of one of Mrs. Otway's first cousins, was in the
Foreign Office; and if he had an inordinate opinion of himself and of
his value to his country, he was still a very good, steady fellow. Lately
he had fallen into the way of coming down to Witanbury exceedingly
often; but when doing so he did not stay with the Otways, in their
pretty house in the Close, as would have been natural and as would also
naturally have made his visits rather less frequent; instead, he stayed in
lodgings close to the gateway which divided the Close from the town,
and thus was able to be at the Trellis House as much or as little as he
liked. It was generally much. Mrs. Otway wondered whether the war
would so far affect his work as to keep him away from Witanbury this
summer. She rather hoped it would.
"I'm even more sorry than usual for Jervis Blake to-day!" and this time
there was a note of real kindness in Miss Forsyth's voice. "I shouldn't
be surprised if he enlisted."
"Oh, I hope he won't do that!" Mrs. Otway was shocked at the
suggestion. Jervis Blake was a person for whom she had a good deal of
tolerant affection. He was quite an ordinary young man, and he had had

the quite ordinary bad luck of failing to pass successive Army
examinations. The news that he had failed again had just become
known to his friends, and unluckily it was his last chance, as he was
now past the age limit. The exceptional feature in his very common
case was that he happened to be the only son of a distinguished soldier.
"I should certainly enlist if I were he," continued Miss Forsyth
thoughtfully. "He wouldn't have long to wait for promotion from the
ranks."
"His father would never forgive him!"
"The England of to-day is a different England from the England of
yesterday," observed Miss Forsyth drily; and as the other stared at her,
genuinely astonished by the strange words, "Don't you agree that that is
so, Mary?"
"No, I can't say that I do." Mrs. Otway spoke with greater decision than
was her wont. Miss Forsyth was far too fond of setting the world to
rights.
"Ah! well, I think
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