Something Light by Margery Sharp Page A

wrong!” she complained happily. “How will anyone take Teddy for a wolf, with me in the back seat?”
    â€œYou do our neighbors an injustice,” said Mr. Meare complacently. “They’ll think you have to keep an eye on me.—We’ll stop at the local on our way back,” he explained to Louisa. “It’s not often I get Molly out on the spree!”
    The parting at the station was genuinely affectionate all round. The Meares waited to see Louisa’s train draw in, and then draw out. Her last glimpse of them was as they stood waving vigorously—Mr. Meare to the left, his wife to the right; it had to be thus, because they were also hand-in-hand.
    7
    The train drew out. Louisa, alone in her compartment, sat reflective and—envious.
    She hadn’t envied, or not much, Mrs. Anstruther and F. Pennon. Louisa might have envied all the good grub going, but she didn’t envy the (prospective) Pennons in their personal relation. They’d probably do well enough—he acquiring a profile and an accomplished hostess, she a gilt-edged meal ticket; no doubt some slight festooning of sentiment, under Enid’s expert hands, would soften the transaction to acceptability. The Meares were something else. In the Meares, Louisa saw something she envied not with her appetite, but with her heart.
    They were just so damned fond of each other, Molly Meare didn’t even see how the paint was peeling. Ted Meare was so fond of his Molly, driving a Londony glamour girl to the station became an innocent domestic joke. (“Which is going to last them for years,” thought Louisa perceptively. For years Molly Meare would remind her husband of that wild excursion!) On a railway platform they stood as unselfconsciously hand-in-hand as a couple of teenagers—more so; with the Meares it was evidently a matter of habit. Louisa pictured them hand-in-hand still, at the local; sitting close together on a hard bench, having a devil of a spree over small sherries.
    â€œI’ve been on the wrong tack,” thought Louisa. “I don’t need a rich husband, I need a husband like Teddy Meare …”
    On either side of the line, now, small back gardens ran up to small houses. In more than one, a man was digging, or mowing the lawn; in more than one, a woman had come out to bear him company. Louisa fancied a breath of contentment rising up from them, as the scent of limes might have risen, the train running between an avenue of lime trees.
    â€œWhat do I want with a lot of money?” thought Louisa. “I can’t want it badly; if I did, I’d have collared old Freddy. It was my subconscious damn well right as usual,” thought Louisa, “I don’t want someone rich, I want someone steady …
    â€œWho do I know who’s steady?” thought Louisa.
    She had to think a long way back, all the way to Broydon, to the days when she’d skylarked about the evening roads with boys on bicycles. But it wasn’t one of these Louisa at last recalled; against the more sober background of the Free Library—sniffing again the mingled odors of dust, bookbindings, and her own Phul-Nana perfume—she saw the figure of Jimmy Brown edge shyly round from Ceramics to Biography, as she, from Biography, edged round to Ceramics.
    8
    Louisa was the only girl who paid much attention to him. She was already so fond of men, Jimmy’s gangling figure and pebble lenses didn’t put her off, they rather roused her sympathy; she quite often kept a date with him at the Library even if it wasn’t raining. Her reward was an earnest, awkward devotion, which if Louisa didn’t particularly value, she allowed no one else to make game of.
    Contemplating it, and Jimmy, now, she was more appreciative. He mightn’t have been much to look at, but he was steady as a rock.
    He had even, or very nearly (in Mrs. Anstruther’s phrase), people. His father was an optician,