Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Sisters -- Fiction
"It's a secret," Keith laughed. "Tell you later. Fire away!" He tasted
the soup, while Jenny looked at five little letter biscuits in her own
plate. She spelt them out E T K I H--KEITH. He watched her, enjoying the
spectacle of the naive mind in action as the light darted into her face.
"I've got JENNY," he said, embarrassed. She craned, and read the letters
with open eyes of marvel. They both beamed afresh at the primitive
fancy.
"How did you do it?" Jenny asked inquisitively. "But it's nice." They
supped the soup. Followed, whitebait: thousands of little fish.... Jenny
hardly liked to crunch them. Keith whipped away the plates, and dived
back into the cabin with a huge pie that made her gasp. "My gracious!"
said Jenny. "I can never eat it!"
"Not _all_ of it," Keith admitted. "Just a bit, eh?" He carved.
"Oh, thank goodness it's not stew and bread and butter pudding!" cried
Jenny, as the first mouthful of the pie made her shut her eyes tightly.
"It's like heaven!"
"If they have pies there." Jenny had not meant that: she had meant only
that her sensations were those of supreme contentment. "Give me the old
earth; and supper with Jenny!"
"Really?" Jenny was all brimming with delight.
"What will you have to drink? Claret? Burgundy?" Keith was again upon
his feet. He poured out a large glass of red wine and laid it before
her. Jenny saw with marvel the reflections of light on the wine and of
the wine upon the tablecloth. She took a timid sip, and the wine ran
tingling into her being.
"High life," she murmured. "Don't make me tipsy!" They exchanged
overjoyed and intimate glances, laughing.
There followed trifle. Trifle had always been Jenny's dream; and this
trifle was her dream come true. It melted in the mouth; its flavours
were those of innumerable spices. She was transported with happiness at
the mere thought of such trifle. As her palate vainly tried to unravel
the secrets of the dish, Keith, who was closely observant, saw that she
was lost in a kind of fanatical adoration of trifle.
"You like it?" he asked.
"I shall never forget it!" cried Jenny. "Never as long as I live. When
I'm an old ... great-aunt...." She had hesitated at her destiny. "I
shall bore all the kids with tales about it. I shall say 'That night on
the yacht ... when I first knew what trifle meant....' They won't half
get sick of it. But I shan't."
"You'll like to think about it?" asked Keith. "Like to remember
to-night?"
"Will _you_?" parried Jenny. "The night you had Jenny Blanchard to
supper?" Their eyes met, in a long and searching glance, in which
candour was not unmixed with a kind of measuring distrust.
vii
Keith's face might have been carven for all the truth that Jenny got
from it then. There darted across her mind the chauffeur's certainty
that she was to be his passenger. She took another sip of wine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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