Francie (13 page)

Francie was not near to tears, but there was a small lump in her throat which threatened to become chronic. It was no use trying to eat. She was crumbling a piece of toast over her plate when Pop, who was reading a long letter, suddenly exclaimed, “If this isn't timely! Who do you think's here in England, not very far out of London? Your Aunt Laura!”

“Aunt Lolly?” Francie's face was transfigured. She dropped her toast. “Really, Pop? Oh, that's perfectly marvelous. Where is she? How come she's here?”

“Well now, let me figure it out,” said Pop. “Martin's been stationed here, evidently, and Laura wrote to us about it some time ago. Your letter, or mine—I forget which—told her about our plans—it must have crossed hers and hasn't followed her back yet on a return trip. This letter's gone to Jefferson and then was sent here, as you can see by all the postmarks and addresses. The point is, she doesn't know we're over in England at all. She's been out at their rented place, The Warren, for the past six weeks, it looks like. Well, chicken, that's good news, isn't it?” He put the envelope on the table and smiled at her pleasure.

“What's Uncle Martin here for?”

“Advising the Government, as usual. He used to be on Unesco, and then they shifted him over to Uno, and now—”

“Never mind all that alphabet,” said Francie, laughing. “It's enough for me that he's brought Aunt Lolly with him.”

Laura Barclay was her godmother, called “aunt” by courtesy. She had been a school friend of Francie's mother, and through an adventurous busy life of traveling she had always kept in contact with her goddaughter, to the extent of visiting Jefferson whenever she came back to the States. Francie as a child had thought of her adored Aunt Lolly as a kind of fairy-tale person, and even now it seemed quite natural that she should pop up in England in this miraculous way.

“He'll be here,” Pop was saying, “until the commission he's sitting on has finished the inquiry they're making, which is an unknown length of time, according to Laura, so she's taken this house out in the country. Why didn't they find somewhere to live in town, I wonder? It would be easier.”

“Aunt Lolly hates living in cities,” said Francie. “She always goes out into the country if she can possibly do it. Of course, it must be hard to get around in the country here, but—”

“Oh, they'd get an extra allowance of petrol,” said Pop.

“What's the quickest way to get in touch with them?” Francie wondered aloud.

“Telephone,” said Pop. “We can put a call through right now. That gives me an idea, honey. They're out in Hampshire and the house sounds big enough for any number of visitors, the way Laura writes, so why shouldn't you invite yourself out there for the rest of your Easter vacation? It would take a load off my mind. I'll have to admit I don't know how to keep you amused here in town.”

“Of course, if she can have me. And you must promise to come out for the weekend. But—oh bother.” Francie's face fell. “I can't, Pop, I was forgetting Penny. I invited her here to spend a few days. It's all fixed up with the hotel, too.”

“But you could ask her if she minds waiting, couldn't you?”

“Ordinarily I could, and would,” said Francie, “but I hate to do it just at this minute, because Penny's having a little trouble at home. With her stepfather.”

“That's too bad,” said Pop thoughtfully. “Anyway, we'd better phone Laura.”

The hotel room when Francie returned to it looked ten times brighter than it had when she woke up that morning. Her grudge against England had vanished for the moment, and she felt like a different person as she put in a telephone call to the number on Aunt Lolly's letter paper. She wanted to jump with excitement and happiness when she heard Mrs. Barclay's voice and brisk accent.

“It's
me
, it's Francie!” she cried. “Yes, it
is
, honestly … No, I'm here in London. London! … I know, isn't it funny? I know you didn't … Can you believe it? Yes, Pop's here too.… Let him talk to you about it and explain, and then I'll come back.”

It didn't take long for the compatriots to arrange a meeting as soon as possible. Aunt Lolly would not listen to any suggestion of delay; she swept the difficulty of Penelope out of the way in a trice.

“But of course you must bring her along, Francie darling. Why not? We've all the room in the world down here.
Of course!
I'm angry that you didn't think of it for yourself. Very well, pet, the two-thirty train this afternoon—Martin's working at home today so he can meet you—and you can arrange with your friend to follow when she likes.”

“Oh, Americans
are
wonderful!” said Francie with a happy sigh as she hung up. “Just look how quickly that was all decided. The way they hem and haw over any arrangement at school would drive you crazy, Pop.”

“You've got to remember that the English are more thorough than we are, Francie, and they do lots of things better than we can,” Pop reminded her.

“I don't feel like making any allowances at all, just now,” she said. “Do you mind? Wait a minute—I'm phoning Penny.”

Here for the first time her high spirits met a check. Penelope was rather hesitant about changing plans.

“It's so sudden,” she explained. “I don't know if Mummy will approve. I'll have to ask her.”

“But why shouldn't you come? You were coming up to town anyway to be with me, weren't you? And that was all right,” said Francie. Inwardly, however, she was thinking, “Oh bother, now I've gone and been too impulsive again. These English, they never do anything sudden or a bit informal.” She felt snubbed, and a little bit cross with Penny, though she knew it wasn't Penny's fault at all.

“It's not the same thing,” Penny was explaining. “Mummy might say it's an imposition on your Aunt Laura, not knowing me … Now Francie, stop thinking I'm being stuffy. Yes you do, I can hear it in your voice.”

Francie admitted it with a laugh. “If my aunt can fix it with your mother, though, you will come, won't you? That's all right then. I'd back Aunt Lolly against any book of etiquette in the world.”

Back went the receiver on the hook, and up again, while Francie called Mrs. Barclay.

“Of course,” said Aunt Laura. “That's to be expected … Naturally, Francie, no mother would send her daughter out into the blue without
some
… of course I will, you little goose. Nobody's been silly about this but you, yourself. I'll write to Penelope's mother this instant. No, I'll telephone her. I must say I like to see you busying yourself on somebody else's behalf for a change.”

“She's such a good friend of mine, Aunt Lolly. I'd like a chance to find out what's bothering her—she's an awfully well-balanced girl usually, you see; it's not like her to worry. I'd be terribly glad to see you two together.”

“All right, honey. We'll fix it,” said Aunt Lolly cheerfully.

“Why do you live in a warren?” demanded Francie of Uncle Martin, who had met her at the station in an American roadster. The name of Aunt Lolly's place, The Warren, had puzzled her from the first.

“I wouldn't know,” Uncle Martin said. “That's what they call the place, that's all. Laura took it sight unseen, after she'd written to a few agents, because they all told her it's so hard to find houses in England just now. She jumped at it. It's turned out pretty well, considering.”

“Oo, I should just say it has!”

The Warren looked charming with its flat warm-red front between carefully clipped trees. It was a Queen Anne house, beautifully done up and furnished, with gleaming parquet floors. A white-capped maid opened the door. Aunt Laura was waiting to greet them, and Francie rushed to give her a big hug.

“And how's the English schoolgirl? Goodness, Francie, but you're simply enormous. Isn't she, Martin?”

“Big enough, but not enormous,” said Uncle Martin, grinning. “She wouldn't thank you for that description. I'd say she's been a little cowed over here, haven't you, Francie?”

“Wait and see,” Francie countered. “Aunt Lolly, is Penny—”

“Ye-es, Penny's coming,” Mrs. Barclay broke in. “I
told
you it would be all right, didn't I? She'll be here in the morning. Now run along with Simmons and find out where your room is. Wash your face, and then we'll show you around.”

Penny looked around appreciatively as Francie led her into the room they were to share. “Lovely!” she said. “Aren't we lucky! All this is exactly like a fairy tale.”

“That's how Aunt Lolly has always made things seem to me,” said Francie, “like a fairy godmother, when I was little. She was always the last word in posh and simply dazzled me when she would descend on our house in Jefferson, so well dressed and smelling delicious.”

“She's charming,” said Penny, “and the house is too. How clever of her to find it and to make it look so nice. It isn't really like a modern English house at all, is it?”

“No. It's more like Hollywood's idea of an English house … But Aunt Lolly hasn't done anything special to it, you know. I was asking her last night and she said it was this way when they got here. It's just little touches; she has a talent.”

The girls sat in comfortable chairs at the fireplace, which in deference to Aunt Lolly's American ideas actually had a roaring fire in it, though this was a bedroom. The curtains were of quiet-patterned glazed chintz and the beds were four-posters, curtained in the same chintz.

Penny sighed contentedly. “Such luxury,” she murmured. “She's made the best of two worlds. I'm awfully glad you managed to get me here.”

“That was Aunt Lolly,” said Francie, laughing. “She can do most things. But your mother wasn't sticky about it at all, actually.”

“No, as a matter of fact she wasn't.” A shadow crossed Penny's face. “Poor Mummy. She was probably overjoyed to get me out of the house, so that the tension would relax a bit.”

“Now then, just what
is
all this?” asked Francie.

Penelope found it rather difficult to state her grievance in a connected way, but in bits and pieces it came out at last. Her stepfather, she insisted, was a very nice man and exactly the sort of person her mother needed. It would be all right if there were no Penelope, but he had strong ideas about Penelope's future.

“Why? That's none of his business,” said Francie indignantly, ready to fight for her friend.

“That's just the point; he thinks it is. You see, he's rather old-fashioned, and considers girls my age mere children. As Mummy's husband—”

“But you're practically grown up! Why, in a little while you'd be legally—”

“That's how I look at it, myself,” said Penny, “but it's becoming fairly obvious that he and I simply don't agree on that. Which makes life awkward.”

“It's ridiculous! In America—”

“We're in England,” Penelope reminded her.

She went on to explain in detail. As she had told Francie on the boat coming over, she was passionately fond of the theater, and it was her ambition to make a career of it. Not as an actress, she often explained.

“There's not enough
in
acting,” she explained earnestly, for the hundredth time. “An actress hangs about for months just to get some miserable little part that may last a few weeks, unless she's one in a thousand and is awfully lucky to boot. I don't merely want to show off on a stage. I want to
work
in the theater. What really does fascinate me, as you know, is producing and directing. There's plenty of room in the profession for a person who's willing to do the donkey-work, and that's exactly the kind of thing I love.”

“Yes, of course,” said Francie warmly. “Westers says you're really very good at that, too—at staging and interpreting. I'll bet you could get one of those scholarships in the Dramatic—”

“You
do
understand,” said Penelope in relieved tones. “I don't know why I'm going in for all this woffle—telling you about it, over and over—but it does help me to collect my own thoughts. And I've been so squashed down these hols at home, Francie, you can't think! Uncle Jim won't let me talk about it at all. He keeps saying flatly that I'm not to train for the stage. He makes it sound as if I wanted to be one of those girls you read about, who die of hunger on the steps of the Theatre Royale! And he acts as if, now he's spoken, the whole thing is settled and done with. He's closed his mind absolutely to any sort of discussion. Of course I don't accept his attitude for a minute, but how can I drag poor Mummy into what would certainly be a family row?”

The girls looked at each other helplessly. “It's difficult, I can see that,” admitted Francie, “but he can hardly interfere if your mind's made up.”

“Not directly, but it's no help. And if he persuades Mummy to put me into a secretarial school—”

“Secretarial school?” Francie echoed.

“There's a day school near our village, where I'd learn how to type and do shorthand,” said Penny. “They turn you out in a year. It's a very good place, I'm sure, but I'd never be able to go in for dramatic work from there. I'd lose so much time, too. It would be the end of me. Absolutely the end.”

Francie was gravely worried. The thing she had always most admired in her friend Penelope was Penny's little air of being in full control of the situation, of being able to reflect calmly on her world. Now this self-possession of Penny's seemed to have dissolved. There were actually tears in her eyes. “She takes this terribly hard,” Francie said to herself with a sense of awe. She realized that Penny's emotion was a stronger thing than she, or her friend Ruth for instance, had ever felt.

“You don't have to leave Fairfields yet, do you?” she asked in hushed tones.