Read The Daughters of Mrs Peacock for Free Online Page A

you?’ he said, on an anxious afterthought.
    â€˜Not in the least. It’s quite warm.’ She moved towards the glass doors, and he darted ahead and flung them open for her. ‘The grass may be a little damp,’ she said, ‘but that won’t hurt us.’ She stepped out, spreading her hands wide as if to catch the sunshine. ‘Coming, Kitty?’
    Before Catherine could respond, which she was in no hurry to do, he saved her the trouble by saying: ‘Miss Catherine, I fancy, is inseparable from her book. What book is it, Miss Catherine, if I may ask?’ She exhibited the volume. ‘A novel? I see.’
    â€˜Do you disapprove?’ said Catherine.
    â€˜Not necessarily. By no means. There are novels
and
novels.’
    â€˜Which is this, I wonder?’ she murmured, but expected no answer, seeing with a sigh of contentment that he was gone.
    Sarah, though surprised at his boldness, was pleasedwith Mr Pardew for suggesting croquet, a pastime which, though now played annually at Wimbledon and well established in popular favour, had still not entirely lost the charm of novelty, the distinction of being ‘modern’. She could still vividly remember the joyous excitement, some years ago, of lifting the lid of a long box delivered by carrier from Newtonbury and seeing for the first time the strange, beautiful implements. She remembered little Catherine’s squeals of delight, dear Papa’s boyish enthusiasm, and all the solemn business of measuring and marking the lawn. Even now, she not only enjoyed playing the game, but took a childlike sensuous delight in everything associated with it: the brightly painted wooden balls, blue, red, black, yellow; the long-handled mallets, so good to grip, so glorious to swing; the two upstanding varnished pegs or posts; the six white-enamelled hoops; and the four coloured clips which, shifted, from hoop to hoop, recorded the progress of the match. All these, today, had to be fetched from a garden shed and carried to the sunk lawn just beyond sight of the garden room window, a rectangle of level sward, newly mown, recently rained upon, surrounded on all four sides by a smooth grass bank and approached by three stone steps. It was a green and private place, sheltered from the April breezes, open only to the bright sky.
    â€˜What a good idea of yours, Mr Pardew,’ said Sarah, when all was ready. ‘It’ll be the first game of the year.’
    â€˜I’m glad,’ said Mr Pardew. ‘It will be something that I shall always remember. Always.’ He coughed nervously. ‘My name, Miss Sarah, is Hugh. Could you perhaps do me the honour of using it?’
    â€˜Would that be quite proper, do you think,’ she countered, ‘and you a clergyman?’
    He smiled uncertainly. ‘But I am not, you know, so very old.’
    â€˜Well, shall we begin?’ said Sarah, with nervous briskness. ‘There ought to be four of us really. Perhaps Catherine and Julia would join us. Shall I go and ask them?’
    â€˜Not on my account,’ he answered quickly. ‘By no means. Far from it. I am more than content. Two, if I may say so, is the perfect number. Just you and I.’
    â€˜Very well. Which colours will you have?’
    But no, he said:
she
must choose. The choice must always be the lady’s. To choose in such matters, nay to command, was the undoubted prerogative of the fair sex. By ‘such matters’, she retorted, he meant trivial matters she supposed, flustered by his excess of politeness into arguing with him. In everything else women were expected only to obey.
    â€˜Oh no,’ he protested. ‘Where there is love, a true union of hearts, no question of obedience can arise. Guidance, yes. A little gentle guidance.
Strong to protect and resolute to serve
, as the poet says. But not … but not … how shall I put it?’
    â€˜Don’t trouble to put it at all,’ Sarah