The Flowering Thorn Read Online Free

words, a strange and dreadful notion. She thought,
    â€˜Perhaps I am not a woman that men do love.’
    She thought,
    â€˜There are women like that. Attractive women.… And if that is so, and if … that is what I have been waiting for, what am I to do now?’
    The intricate, daily patchwork was still there to work at, the innumerable dovetailing fragments still lay ready to hand: but it now seemed to her, and for the first time, that her work had no pattern.
    â€œI want something new,” said Lesley aloud.
    On the table at her side lay a tiny pocket-book, bound in black silk and stuffed a month ahead with every variety of familiar engagement. Automatically she picked it up and began fluttering the leaves. To-morrow—to-morrow promised the rather rare event of tea out at Cheam with her aunt Mrs. Bassington.

CHAPTER THREE
    â€œIt really is a problem,” said Lady Chrome, thoughtfully helping herself to a piece of chocolate cake.
    â€œMy dear, I dream about it at nights!” wailed Mrs. Bassington; and all three—Mrs. Bassington, Lady Chrome, and Lesley by the fireplace—turned with one accord to take a look at the problem himself, who was seated very comfortably on a wolverine rug and playing with a box of bricks. The game was a simple one, consisting merely in building the eight blocks into a tower and then knocking them down again; but the problem played it for all he was worth. He fell upon the tower, destroyed it, razed it to the ground: the blocks rolled far and wide, farther than the cake-stand: one would never have guessed, to look at him, what a problem he was.
    â€œIt will have to be an orphanage, of course,” murmured Mrs. Bassington, “but I suppose even that involves some financial consideration. I mean one can hardly leave him outside Dr. Barnardo’s.…”
    She looked genuinely worried, poor woman: and indeed had every right to. Exactly a month earlier, and after reading a very moving article on the plight of the unmarried mother, she had engaged as companion a young Scotswoman with a four-year-old boy. (That Nora Craigie afterwards turned out to be a genuine widow, with her marriage lines in her trunk, is neither here nor there: it was the intention which counted, and which, in Mrs. Bassington’s eyes, deserved a better reward.) The Scotswoman proved charming, capable, and as grateful as could be wished: unfortunately she also suffered from heart trouble. This disability she managed to conceal, however, until about fifteen minutes before dying of it; and it was the deception, the slyness of it, which Mrs. Bassington now professed herself unable to forgive. Or at any rate, it was something one could decently complain of, and what with all the trouble of the funeral and the worry of the future, she felt she must either complain or burst.
    â€œWhen I’d treated her really like—like my own daughter!” cried Mrs. Bassington.
    From the other side of the cake-stand Lesley heard her unmoved. She was feeling, for these two flabby and bleating old women, an almost homicidal dislike. The mood of the previous evening was still upon her; she wanted to hurt, to shock, to take her revenge.
    â€œBut are there no relatives at all?” marvelled Lady Chrome. “Not even a grandmother?”
    â€œMy dear!” Mrs. Bassington threw up her hands in despair. “We’ve advertised in things like ‘ John Bull. ’ I even made them put ‘something to their advantage,’ because after all there are the effects as well. And not a single debt—I will say that much for her. But both she and her husband I know were orphans, because she told me so herself, and in these cases it’s always the grandparents who come forward.” She broke off, breathless with so much emotion. It was all even worse than she had thought.
    â€œIf only,” mused Lady Chrome hopelessly, “you could get someone to adopt him! After all,