Read The Gazebo for Free Online Page B

changed. There was a new cinema, and different names over one or two of the shops, but otherwise just the same old spot. A good respectable class of custom and a good respectable class of customer. Not the sort of place where you would expect anything much to happen…
    It was at this point that he ran into Ella Harrison.
    She was looking into a shop window, and when she turned round, there they were, face to face and near enough to have kissed without so much as taking a forward step. He thought of doing it, but only for a moment. Then he said ‘Ella!’ and she said ‘Fred!’, and there they were, looking at each other. He thought she hadn’t worn at all badly. A fine woman, and one who knew how to make the most of herself. The touched-up hair and bright make-up, the extravagantly cut suit, were very much to his taste.
    ‘Fred! Where on earth did you spring from?’
    He gave her the smile which she had once admired so much. As a matter of fact she admired it still. He had a way of looking right into your eyes… He said,
    ‘That’s telling!’
    ‘What are you doing here?’
    ‘Visiting my mum like a good boy.’
    ‘Go on!’
    ‘Believe it or not, that’s just what I’m doing. Did I never tell you I came from these parts?’
    ‘No, you didn’t.’
    ‘Well, maybe not, but it’s true all the same. I’m respectably connected I am, and that’s something you didn’t know either. Martin & Steadman the house-agents half a dozen doors up – well, Bert Martin is my brother.’
    ‘Your brother!’ Her voice was shrill with disbelief.
    ‘Well, step – my mum married his dad. And weren’t we a happy family – I don’t think! Why, I used to work in that dead-alive old office.’
    Ella Harrison came to herself with a jerk. They couldn’t stand here in the High Street with the chance of somebody who knew her bumping into them. One of the Miss Pimms for instance – help! And at that very moment whom should she see on the other side of the street and waiting to cross over but Mabel, the eldest and if possible the nosiest of the three. She said quickly,
    ‘There’s quite a good café at the corner of Sefton Street. Come along and we’ll have a cup of coffee. We can’t talk here.’
    Since she had seen Miss Pimm, Miss Pimm had of course seen her. Practically all that the Miss Pimms went down into the High Street for was to see what there was to be seen. They kept an extremely sharp look-out for it and very little escaped them. Mabel’s glance skimming across the road had already taken note of the fact that Mrs Harrison was wearing a new and expensive-looking suit, when she saw her turn round and greet a stranger. She was quite sure that he was a stranger, because nobody in Grove Hill wore the kind of clothes that he was wearing. But not a stranger to Mrs Harrison – oh, no! The way he was looking at her – well, she could only tell her sisters afterwards that she didn’t think it was at all nice. Bold was the way that she would describe it – distinctly bold.
    It was just as she had made up her mind on this point that Mabel Pimm had her view interrupted by what amounted to a traffic jam. The bus coming down the hill was discharging its passengers, and a furniture-van which had just turned out of Sefton Street took up nearly all the rest of the road. She couldn’t see the opposite pavement at all. She had been most interested. That fast-looking Mrs Harrison – the Miss Pimms still employed the vocabulary of their youth – and a flashy-looking man standing very close together and engaged in what was obviously an intimate conversation! When she told Nettie and Lily about it afterwards, this was the term that she employed. ‘They were standing much too close together – it really looked as if he might be going to kiss her! Not an elderly man at all, and I suppose some people would have called him good-looking, but not the sort of person one would meet socially! Of course one wouldn’t expect Mrs Harrison