Hilltop Tryst. Betty Neels

delayed you…’

      ‘Stay for breakfast?’ suggested her father. ‘My wife will be down directly—I want to be well away before eight o’clock.’ He glanced up. ‘Far to go?’

      ‘Telfont Evias—I’m staying with the Elliotts.’

      ‘George Elliott? My dear chap, give him a ring and say you’re staying for breakfast. It’s all of three miles. Beatrice, will you show him where the telephone is? You can take Nobby back while breakfast is being cooked.’

      Miss Mead lived right in the village in one of the charming cottages which stood on either side of the main street. Trees edged the cobbled pavement and the small front gardens were a blaze of colour. Mr Latimer strolled along beside Beatrice, Nobby tucked under one arm, talking of this and that in his deep voice. Quite nice, but a bit placid, Beatrice decided silently, peeping sideways at his profile. He was undoubtedly good-looking as well as being extremely large. Much, much larger than James, the eldest son of Dr Forbes, who had for some time now taken it for granted that she would marry him when he asked her…

      She decided not to think about him for the moment, and instead pointed out the ancient and famous inn on the corner of the street and suggested that they might cross over, since Miss Mead’s little cottage was on the other side.

      Miss Mead answered their knock on her door. She was tall and thin and elderly, and very ladylike. She wore well-made skirts and blouses, and covered them with cardigans of a suitable weight according to the time of year, and drove a small car. She was liked in the village, but guardedly so, for she had an acid tongue if annoyed.

      But now her stern face crumpled into tearful delight. ‘Nobby—where have you been?’ She took him from Mr Latimer and hugged him close.

      ‘You found him. Oh, I’m so grateful, I can never thank you enough—I’ve hardly slept…’

      She looked at them in turn. ‘He’s not hurt? Has your father seen him, Beatrice?’

      ‘Yes, Miss Mead. Mr Latimer found him down a rabbit-hole and carried him here.’

      ‘He seems to have come to no harm,’ interpolated Mr Latimer in his calm voice. ‘Tired and hungry and thirsty—a couple of days and he’ll be quite fit again.’

      ‘You’re so kind—really, I don’t know how to thank you…’

      ‘No need, Miss Mead. He’s a nice little chap.’ He turned to Beatrice. ‘Should we be getting back? I don’t want to keep your father waiting.’

      A bit cool, she thought, agreeing politely, wishing Miss Mead goodbye and waiting while she shook hands with her companion and thanked him once again. Perhaps his placid manner hid arrogance. Not that it mattered, she reflected, walking back with him and responding politely to his gentle flow of talk; they were most unlikely to meet again. A friend of the Elliotts, staying for a day or two, she supposed.

      He proved to be a delightful guest. Her mother sat him down beside her and plied him with breakfast and a steady flow of nicely veiled questions, which he answered without telling her anything at all about himself. That he knew the Elliotts was a fact, but where he came from and what he did somehow remained obscure. All the same, Mrs Browning liked him, and Beatrice’s three sisters liked him too, taking it in turns to engage him in conversation. And he was charming to them; Ella, fifteen and still at school, Carol, on holiday from the stockbroker’s office where she worked in Salisbury, and Kathy, getting married in a few weeks’ time…

      They were all so pretty, thought Beatrice without rancour; she was pretty herself, but at twenty-six and as the eldest she tended to regard them as very much younger than herself, partly because they were all cast in a smaller mould and could get into each other’s size tens, while she was forced to clothe her splendid proportions in a size fourteen.

      Mr Latimer didn’t overstay his welcome; when her father got up from the table he got up too, saying that he must be on his way. He thanked Mrs Browning for his breakfast, bade her daughters goodbye and left the house with Mr Browning, bidding him goodbye too as they reached the Land Rover parked by the gate and setting off at a leisurely pace in the direction of Telfont Evias.

      ‘What a very nice man,’ observed Mrs Browning, peering at his retreating back from the kitchen window. ‘I do wonder…’ She sighed silently and glanced at Beatrice, busy clearing the breakfast-table. ‘I don’t suppose we shall see him again—I mean, Lorna Elliott has never mentioned him.’

      ‘Perhaps he’s not a close friend.’ Ella, on her way to get the school bus, kissed her mother and ran down the drive.

      And after that no one had much more to say about him; there was the washing-up to do, beds to make, rooms to Hoover and dust and lunch to plan, and as well as that there were the dogs and cats to feed and the old pony in the paddock to groom.

      Mr Browning came back during the morning, saw several patients, just had his coffee and then dashed away again to see a sick cow; and at lunch the talk was largely about Great-Aunt Sybil who lived in Wilton and to whom Beatrice was acting as a companion until some luckless woman would be fool enough to answer her advertisement. Beatrice had been there three weeks already, and that, she pointed out with some heat, was three weeks too long. She was only at home now because the old lady had taken herself off to London to be given her yearly check-up by the particular doctor she favoured. She was due back the next day, and Beatrice had been told to present herself at her aunt’s house in the early afternoon.

      ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s family, I wouldn’t go,’ declared Beatrice.

      ‘It can’t be for much longer, dear,’ soothed her mother, ‘and I know it’s asking a lot of you, but who else is there? Ella’s too young, Carol’s due back in two days’ time and Kathy has such a lot to do before the wedding.’

      Beatrice cast her fine eyes to the ceiling. ‘If the worst comes to the worst, and no one applies for the job, I’d better get married myself.’

      There was an instant chorus of, ‘Oh, has James proposed?’

      And Kathy added, ‘I mean properly, and not just taking you for granted.’

      ‘He’s not said a word,’ said Beatrice cheerfully, ‘and even if he did I wouldn’t…’ She paused, quite surprised that she had meant exactly that.

      Until that very moment she hadn’t bothered too much about James, while at the back of her mind was the knowledge that when he felt like it he would ask her to marry him, or at least allow his intentions to show, but now she was quite sure that she wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth.

      ‘Oh, good,’ said Kathy. ‘He’s not at all your sort, you know.’

      ‘No. I wonder why I didn’t see that?’

      ‘Well, dear—he may never ask you,’ observed her mother.

      ‘That’s just what I mean,’ went on Kathy, ‘you would have dwindled into a long engagement while he deliberated about the future, and then got married without a scrap of romance.’

      ‘Great-Aunt Sybil offers an alternative, doesn’t she?’ Beatrice laughed. ‘I only hope she liked this doctor she went to see. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were dozens of replies to her advert for a companion? Then I can come back home and help Father.’

      Her father drove her over to Wilton the next day after an early lunch. ‘I’m sorry about this, love,’ he said as they drove the few miles to the town, ‘but your great-aunt is my mother’s sister, and I did promise that I’d keep an eye on her.’

      ‘And quite right too,’ said Beatrice stoutly. ‘Families should stick together.’

      Her aunt’s house was Georgian, its front door opening on to the street which divided a square, tree-lined and ringed around by similar roomy old houses. Beatrice kissed her father goodbye, picked up her case and pulled the bell by the door. Mrs Shadwell, the sour-faced housekeeper, answered it and stood aside so that she might