“Hang it all, Greg, the least you can do is drink to your sister’s happiness,” Mr. Taylor complained, his huge bulk looming over the glasses as he filled them.
“Well.…” Gregory gave a sigh. “All right—just this once.”
Mr. Taylor put down the wine bottle with an emphatic bump. Raising the filled glasses, he handed them over ceremoniously one by one.
“To both of you,” he said to Pat and Keith, his brown eyes twinkling. “Only please don’t follow the usual procedure and smash the glasses afterwards. They cost a mint, even as far back as when your mother and I were married.”
The wine was drunk and the glasses returned to the table.
An impressive quiet dropped for a moment.
“I—I think this is mighty nice of all of you,” Keith said at last. “As I said to Mr. Taylor in the cellar, I wasn’t quite sure how you’d accept the idea. Though of course you must have known that Pat and I felt that way about each other.”
“Yes, we knew,” Mrs. Taylor acknowledged, and her smiling face was like a rosy apple. “And what do you mean—you weren’t quite sure? Your father is a friend of ours, isn’t he? It isn’t as though you’re a stranger. Personally, I think it’s a mighty fine match, don’t you, Harry?”
Mr. Taylor was nodding vigorously. “Couldn’t be finer. When is it to be? Decided yet?”
“We thought about three months,” Keith answered. “When I get my next pay rise. I expect it’ll be hard going at first trying to get settled down—but then, it’s the same for all young couples these days. We’ll get by.”
“’Course you will!” Mr. Taylor declared heartily. “Getting married’s a problem whichever way you look at it, but with support on both sides you’ll be all right.”
“Both sides?” Keith repeated vaguely.
“Well, certainly! Your father and us.”
“Oh yes—of course.” Keith gave a peculiar smile to himself and hesitated. Then he made a half move towards the door. “I’d better get along and tell Dad what’s happened. He won’t approve, of course—”
“He’d better!” Mr. Taylor said ominously. “Won’t approve, indeed! Huh! Why not?”
“Oh, he just doesn’t approve of anything. It’s a sort of principle with him—”
“I’ll go home with you,” Pat intervened. “If he won’t listen to you, he will to me. I’ll see to that!”
“But what about your tea, dear?” her mother exclaimed. “You have been working all day and those restaurant meals always leave you hungry.”
“I’ll have tea when I get back.” Pat gave a smile. “Who on earth can think of tea at a time like this?” She caught Keith’s arm impulsively. “Come along, Keith—let’s go and tell your dad.”
He shrugged. “As you like, but I’m afraid he’ll take it the hard way.”
They left the room with their arms about each other and a moment later there was the thud of the front door closing. Mr. Taylor gazed absently before him and pulled out his pipe. With his penknife he scraped the ashes from the bowl into the fire grate.
“They’re born, they grow up, they marry,” he said, musing. “Funny thing, you can sort of picture marriage and home-leaving happening to other people’s children, but not to your own. Pat engaged to be married.… Well, well.”
“It’s a pity she doesn’t use her head a bit more,” Gregory said He folded his table napkin neatly and laid it on one side. With the same methodical movements be produced a cigarette and looked at it. His father gazed down on him thoughtfully.
“Use her head, Greg? How d’you mean?”
“Simply that there are hundreds of men who’d make her a much better husband than Keith Robinson.”
“Plenty who’d make her a worse one, too! He hasn’t got a bad sort of job on the railway—and he’s due for promotion Naturally at twenty-five he isn’t old enough yet to have climbed to anything big as far as money’s concerned, but—”
“Don’t misunderstand me, Dad,” Gregory interrupted. “I wasn’t thinking about his financial status, but about the chap himself.…” He frowned thoughtfully. “It isn’t that I’ve anything against him, only from things he’s said now and again when he’s been here I think he’s got an insanely jealous disposition. And people like that are hell to live with.”
“How do you know?” His father gave a wide grin. “You never lived with such a person.”
Gregory’s light grey eyes were cold. “I don’t consider this situation is so funny, Dad. I’m thinking of Pat’s happiness, and with Keith I can’t see her having any after the novelty’s worn off. Deep down, I think she’s only in love with a handsome face.” Gregory got to his feet. “However, it’s her funeral, I suppose—but I’m entitled to say what I think, and I’ve said it.… Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll go up to my room and browse through those confounded law books. I’ve a problem on my mind at the office.”
He went out and closed the door. Mr. Taylor lighted his pipe slowly and puffed at it. Presently he looked at his wife as she began to move the tray containing the empty glasses towards the adjoining kitchen.
“What do you think, Alice?” he asked. “Think Pat’s doing the wrong thing?”
“Not for a moment! She’s no child, Harry. Oh, take no notice of Greg! He spends so much of his life looking for the faults in people I believe he’d find them in an angel. He means well by Pat, but we know what to think. Why, you’re not beginning to have doubts, are you?”
“Not I—only Greg has the uncomfortable habit of upsetting one’s applecart so completely. Maybe his disliking Keith has a lot to do with it.”
“But does he dislike him?” Mrs. Taylor asked.
“I’m pretty sure of it, but as things are, he’ll have to change his views.”
Mrs. Taylor did not say any more. She gave a shrug of her fleshy shoulders and then went on into the kitchen. Her husband followed her and remained propped against the doorpost. After a while his thoughts took on words.
“Y’know, I think we should have a really good celebration!” he declared.
“But we just had it!” His wife held up one of the wine glasses she was polishing and he gestured back at her.
“Oh, that! That was simply a drink. I mean something really good. A sort of jollification. Pat can invite her friends and Keith can invite his—and bring his father over. A really good get-together, eh? A proper engagement party!”
Clearly the idea appealed to Mrs. Taylor’s sociable soul. She began nodding her blonde head vigorously.
“We’ll tell Pat about it the moment she comes in,” she decided. “She’ll be delighted.… Then she must make a list of who she wants to invite.”
CHAPTER TWO
Pat and Keith talked all the way to his home. It was a journey of perhaps a mile to the centre of the town. They paused at last outside a shop in Ridley Terrace, lying directly off the main street. On the front window it said—Ambrose Robinson. Ironmonger and Locksmith. Keys Made to Order.
“Now for it,” Keith murmured, grasping Pat’s arm. “Here we go!”
He unlocked the house door at the side—the shop itself being closed at six—and led the way through a narrow hall into the back room, which comprised the living quarters. Ambrose Robinson was present—a lean-faced man with thin grey hair. He was seated folded up at the table, eating a meal. Propped before him