Dangerous Journey [antikvár]

Idyll Disturbed The journey would never have been started but for the weak roots of the old elms at the bottom of the tiny garden, and the out-of-season gale which swept the South of England in early September. The wind whistled, howled and whined, cold enough to warrant that blazing log-fire Percy Briggs had been inspired to build. But the newly-fitted windows kept out the draughts, and the small lounge was warm and snug. Which was another triumph for Bruce Murdoch and Mary Dell, whose friends had been convinced that the dilapidated little old cottage near Lulworth Cove could never be made comfortable. From the outside, it was a gem of that early Elizabethan architecture which only reached Dorset a few months before the death of Good Queen Bess-for new styles in architecture, like most other innovations in the fashionable world, started near London in those days and travelled slowly. But, said the critics, the oak beams were worm-eaten and the bricks crumbling to dust, and Mary and Murdoch were poor, benighted fools for wasting time and money on it. And anyway, it was hardly decent. Had Bruce and Mary been married, it would have been bad enough. But to go into ecstasies over that broken-down little rabbit-hutch and brazenly plan its rebuilding and talk about the two months they would spend down there, without any prior visit to registry office or church-no, it was too bad! None of which worried the two conspirators. Murdoch was tall and broad and almost flaxen-haired; Scottish-born and English-bred. Mary, tall for a woman, was slim and dark and very lovely. Neither were given to quick