Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas Read Online Free

persisted a shade more loudly, “was excessively well. We saw her safely onto the stage at Basingstoke, and have every expectation she will reach her friends in Bath by nightfall. She begged that I wish you all the joy of the season.”
    “Martha does not know what it is to be ill,” Mary said fretfully. “She has no compassion for those who suffer.”
    Thus she despatched her sister, whilst I despatched the ham.
    It is a pity, indeed, that James’s choice did not light upon Martha when he went looking for a wife among the Lloyds of Ibthorpe. It is many years since I ceased to regard Martha as an acquaintance, and embraced her wholeheartedly as a relation. A friend of the bosom in my distant girlhood—a companion in wet country walks and overheated Assembly-Room balls—she is become as much a sister to me as Cassandra. Since her mother’s death, indeed, she has made her home with us at Chawton. Martha should never have met us with gloom, or served my mother’s parsonage with neglect. But it is probable the high spirits and excellent sense of my dearest friend should have been entirely thrown away upon my eldest brother. The loss of his Anne, a mere eighteen months after the birth of their only child, seems to have turned his heart queerly—tho’ I do say it of a clergyman, whose solace ought to be in the prospect of Better Things.
    Certainly James did not attempt to supply Anne’s gentle place in his second attachment; his union with Mary might best be regarded as a marriage of convenience, undertaken by a gentleman perplexed with the care of managing a parish and raising a female child entirely alone. If there was an initial liking in James’s choice—if indeed there was even love—it has long since gone off, like a beauty’s brief and early bloom. Such an unhappy situation cannot be without its ill effects upon every member of the household.
    Mary consented to raise little Anna, James’s child; but what maternal love she claims is reserved, in rare moments, for her own progeny: James-Edward, a youth of sixteen who spends the better part of his year at Winchester School, and Caroline, a young miss of nine years who wanders the hedgerows in summer and hides in the garrets with stolen books during the long winter months. It was the “teazing”of these two that had set our Mary’s head to aching; but as I had heard not a peep from the adjoining rooms in the interval following our arrival, I concluded both children were gone out—Caroline to visit her pony in the stables, perhaps, and James-Edward to one of the happier households of Dummer or Sherborne St. John. After the bustle of Winchester, I should imagine the poor boy was desperate for any amusement that might offer, for certainly none was to be found within the parsonage.
    As for Anna—she is now grown and married a month to her improvident curate, Ben Lefroy, the youngest son of my own dear departed friend, Madam Lefroy. Ben is indolent and barely inclined to shift for himself, much less a wife; to unite their fortunes must be regarded as one of the worst decisions either party ever made; but as a certain release from the household at Steventon, Anna’s match may be credited a success.
    I was summoned from my ruminations—and my enjoyment of the ham—by all the noise of arrival emanating from the rear of the house.
    “James!” Mary said with a curious air of satisfaction. She drew her draperies once more to her chin, cast her head languidly on the sopha pillow, and stared fixedly into the blank windowpane—the very image of one sunk in suffering.
    The heavy tread of booted feet sounded in the passage. There was a flicker as James paused to light a wall sconce with his taper, the only light in the parsonage save the glow from the hearth.
    “Pray secure an oil lamp, dearest, whilst you are about it,” my mother called out. “Else you are likely to trample us in all this gloom.”
    “Mama!” James hastened through the parlour doorway, his