MR. WADDINGTON OF WYCK

BY MAY SINCLAIR

1921




MR. WADDINGTON OF WYCK




I


1

Barbara wished she would come back. For the last hour Fanny Waddington
had kept on passing in and out of the room through the open door into
the garden, bringing in tulips, white, pink, and red tulips, for the
flowered Lowestoft bowls, hovering over them, caressing them with her
delicate butterfly fingers, humming some sort of song to herself.

The song mixes itself up with the Stores list Barbara was making: "Two
dozen glass towels. Twelve pounds of Spratt's puppy biscuits. One dozen
gent.'s all-silk pyjamas, extra large size" ... "A-hoom--hoom,
a-hoom--hoom" (that _Impromptu_ of Schubert's), and with the notes
Barbara was writing: "Mrs. Waddington has pleasure in enclosing...."