Enchanted Glass

“Don’t ask,” Andrew said. “Mr Stock will be busy full time until the Fete, stretching beans and pumping up potatoes. He collects First Prizes. He also prides himself on being the only one who can start that mower. I hope, by the time the Fête’s over, that the mower will have reverted to its old form. Otherwise I shall get mountains of dead lettuce.”

“I understand,” said Aidan. “I think.”

“And yard-long carrots,” Andrew said bitterly.

They unloaded the groceries and took them to the kitchen. Then Aidan went back for his own bulging bags. While he was hauling them up to his room, he heard a noise that sounded like the mower. Shaun must have disobeyed Andrew, he thought, looking out of the landing window. But the noise turned out to be Tarquin O’Connor’s adapted car arriving to take Stashe home for lunch. Good! Aidan thought. There was a huge electric torch on the windowsill of Andrew’s study. Once Stashe was out of the way, Aidan intended to go in and borrow it. He was going to need it for tonight.

Aidan liked the room he had been given. He liked its size and its low ceiling and its long, low window that showed that the walls were three feet thick. He wondered if that window had at one time been several arrow slits. Melstone House was certainly old enough. Above all, Aidan was charmed by the way the creaky wooden floor ran downhill to all four walls. If he put the marble he happened to have in his pocket down in the middle of the room, it rolled away to any one of the walls, depending how he dropped it.

To his dismay, Mrs Stock was in the room, tidying repressively. Being forbidden to move the living room furniture, Mrs Stock was taking out her feelings on the spare room. She glowered at Aidan and his carrier bags.

“Moving in for a long stay, are you?” she said. “You’ve got enough for a lifetime there. I hope you’re grateful to Professor Hope. He isn’t made of money, you know.”