CHAPTER SEVEN
It is pleasant to wake to the sound of exquisite--and sufficiently
distant--music. It is also pleasant to wake to the odour of good--and
sufficiently distant--coffee.
The morning after her remarkable arrival in Golden Square Brigit Mead
awoke to both these pleasant things. Somewhere downstairs someone was
playing a simple, plaintive air on a violin, and still further away
someone was making coffee--delicious coffee.
The girl for a moment could not remember where she was; the room, with
its dark-grey paper and stiff black-walnut furniture, was
foreign-looking, so were the coloured pictures of religious subjects on
the walls. On the chimney-piece stood two blue glass vases filled with
dried grasses, and the lace curtains flaunted their stiff cleanliness
against otherwise unshaded windows.
Where was she?
And then, as the music broke off suddenly, she remembered, and smiled in
delighted recollection of the evening before. Waking was usually such a
bore; the thought of breakfast, always a severe test to the unsociable,
was horrid to her. There would be either a solitary meal in the big dark
dining-room, or what was worse, guests to entertain (for Lady Kingsmead
never appeared until after eleven), and the disagreeable hurry and
scurry contingent on the catching of different trains.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62