"Hope, Anthony - Frivolous Cupid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hope Anthony)

"Oh, play with me! We shall make a good pair."

"Then you must be very good."

"Well, no one can play a hang here, you know. Besides I'm sure
you're all right, really."

"You forget my weight of years."

He opened his blue eyes a little, and laughed. He was, in fact,
astonished to find that she was quite a young woman. Remembering
old Mortimer and the babies, he had thought of her as full
middle-aged. But she was not; nor had she that likeness to a
suet pudding, which his newborn critical faculty cruelly detected
in his old friends, the Vicarage girls.

There was one of them--Maudie--with whom he had flirted in his
holidays; he wondered at that, especially when a relentless
memory told him that Mrs. Mortimer must have been at the
parties where the thing went on. He felt very much older, so
much older that Mrs. Mortimer became at once a contemporary.
Why, then, should she begin, as she now did, to talk to him, in
quasi maternal fashion, about his prospects? Men don't have
prospects, or, anyhow, are spared questionings thereon.

Either from impatience of this topic, or because, after all,
tennis was not to be neglected, he left her, and she sat alone
for a little while, watching him play. She was glad that she had
not played; she could not have rivaled the activity of the
Vicarage girls. She got up and joined Mrs. Sterling, who was
presiding over the club teapot. The good lady expected
compliments on her son, but for some reason Mrs. Mortimer gave
her none. Very soon, indeed, she took Johnnie away with her,
leaving her husband to follow at his leisure.

In comparing Maudie Sinclair to a suet pudding, Harry had looked
at the dark side of the matter.

The suggestion, though indisputable, was only occasionally
obtrusive, and as a rule hushed almost to silence by the pleasant
good nature which redeemed shapeless features. Mrs. Mortimer had
always liked Maudie, who ran in and out of her house continually,
and had made of herself a vice-mother to the little children.

The very next day she came, and, in the intervals of playing
cricket with Johnnie, took occasion to inform Mrs. Mortimer that
in her opinion Harry Sterling was by no means improved by his new
status and dignity. She went so far as to use the term "stuck-
up." "He didn't use to be like that," she said, shaking her
head; "he used to be very jolly." Mrs. Mortimer was relieved to