"_We_ are alone," I hissed--or whatever you do to a sentence without any
"s's" in it to make it dramatic. "Your friends cannot save you now.
Prepare to--er--come a walk up the hill with me."
"Help! Help!" whispered Myra. She hesitated a moment; then swung herself
out of the hammock and went in for her hat.
We climbed up a steep path which led to the rock-village above us.
Simpson had told us that we must see the village; still more earnestly
he had begged us to see Corsica. The view of Corsica was to be obtained
from a point some miles up--too far to go before lunch.
"However, we can always say we saw it," I reassured Myra. "From this
distance you can't be certain of recognising an island you don't know.
Any small cloud on the horizon will do."
"I know it on the map."
"Yes, but it looks quite different in real life. The great thing is to
be able to assure Simpson at lunch that the Corsican question is now
closed. When we're a little higher up, I shall say, 'Surely that's
Corsica?' and you'll say, 'Not _Corsica_,?" as though you'd rather
expected the Isle of Wight; and then it'll be all over. Hallo!
We had just passed the narrow archway leading into the courtyard of the
village and were following the path up the hill. But in that moment of
passing we had been observed. Behind us a dozen village children now
trailed eagerly.
"Oh, the dears!" cried Myra.
"But I think we made a mistake to bring them," I said severely. "No one
is prouder of our--one, two, three ... I make it eleven--our eleven
children than I am, but there are times when Father and Mother want to
be alone."
"I'm sorry, dear. I thought you'd be so proud to have them all with
you."
"I _am_ proud of them. To reflect that all the--one, two ... I make it
thirteen--all these thirteen are ours is very inspiring. But I don't
like people to think that we cannot afford our youngest, our little
Philomène, shoes and stockings. And Giuseppe should have washed his face
since last Friday. These are small matters, but they are very trying to
a father."
"Have you any coppers?" asked Myra suddenly. "You forgot their
pocket-money last week."
"One, two, three--I cannot possibly afford--one, two, three, four----
Myra, I do wish you'd count them definitely and tell mo how many we
have. One likes to know. I cannot afford pocket-money for more than a
dozen."
"Ten." She took a franc from me and gave it to the biggest girl.
(Anne-Marie, our first, and getting on so nicely with her French.)
Rapidly she explained what was to be done with it, Anne-Marie's look of
intense rapture slowly straightening itself to one of ordinary gratitude
as the financial standing of the other nine in the business became
clear. Then we waved farewell to our family and went on.
High above the village, a thousand feet above the sea, we rested, and
looked down upon the silvery olives stretching into the blue ... and
more particularly upon one red roof which stood up amid the grey-green
trees.
"That's the Cardews' villa," I said.
Myra was silent.
When Myra married me she promised to love, honour and write all my
thank-you-very-much letters for me, for we agreed before the ceremony
that the word "obey" should mean nothing more than that. There are two
sorts of T. Y. V. M. letters--the "Thank you very much for asking us, we
shall be delighted to come," and the "Thank you very much for having us,
we enjoyed it immensely." With these off my mind I could really
concentrate on my work, or my short mashie shots, or whatever was of
importance. But there was now a new kind of letter to write, and one
rather outside the terms of our original understanding. A friend of mine
had told his friends the Cardews that we were going out to the Riviera
and would let them know when we arrived ... and we had arrived a week
ago.
"It isn't at all an easy letter to write," said Myra. "It's practically
asking a stranger for hospitality."
"Let us say 'indicating our readiness to accept it.' It sounds better."
Myra smiled slowly to herself.
"'Dear Mrs. Cardew,'" she said, "'we are ready for lunch when you are.
Yours sincerely.'"
"Well, that's the idea."
"And then what about the others? If the Cardews are going to be nice we
don't want to leave Dahlia and all of them out of it."