Lily Read Online Free Page A

She squared her shoulders and started for the common room.
    She wasn’t there. Lily searched the room frantically with her eyes. She wasn’t there!
    “Did you write your letter, dearie?”
    “The lady in the black coat, she came in the coach after ours and there was a man with her, younger—”
    “They’ve gone out, love. The Penzance coach is just leaving. You can catch her if you—”
    She broke off when Lily spun around and dashed for the door. Halfway through it, she remembered to stop and call back over her shoulder, “Thank you for the paper! Good-bye!” The startled landlady lifted a hand to wave, but Lily had disappeared.
    The young man was already handing the woman into the coach. “Oh, Mrs.—madam! Excuse me!” she cried, breaking into a run across the rutted dirt yard. She reached them out of breath. The hostile looks they turned on her had a diminishing effect on her confidence. She took a breath and plunged in.
    “Beggin’ your pardon, mistress, but I chanced t’ overhair what you were sayin’ t’ the landlady just naow, an’ I was after wonderin’ if you’d be thinkin’ o’ meself for housemaid, like. I’ve a wonderful good character from me last lady, so she told me, an’ I’m a nate an’ tidy parson by nature an’ would wark tremendous hard for you. Would you be wantin’ t’ see me character?”
    Well, it was sort of Irish, or at least more Irish than anything else. She hoped. Without waiting for the woman’s answer, she took out the envelope and thrust it into her hands, smiling a big, respectful smile. The woman returned it with a suspicious scowl, but Lily decided it was her natural expression and not meant personally. Yet.
    She shrugged one massive shoulder with irritation and opened the envelope. Lily waited, praying the ink was dry. She hazarded a glance at the man. They had to be mother and son; the resemblance was too strong to be accounted for by any other relationship. But he was smiling, something she hadn’t seen his mother do. It wasn’t a nice smile.
    The mother finished reading and looked up. She had small black eyes, slightly protruding, and narrowed to slits now with skepticism. Lily spoke quickly. “Is it a good one, then? I’m not much for raidin’,” she said with a little embarrassed laugh, “but me mistess did say ‘twould sarve me well when th’ time came.” When the toime came, I should’ve said, she fretted, wondering if the accent was such a good idea after all. Her father was an Irishman, but he’d lost most of his lilt after all the years lived in England. But sometimes, when he’d drunk too much whiskey, he would lapse into an exaggerated brogue, and it was her imperfect memory of that accent that Lily was relying on now to see her through this interview.
    “If it’s true, it’ll serve.”
    She widened her eyes in innocent protest. “Oh, ma’am, it’s true, be Jaysus, as God is me witness—”
    “Hold your tongue! Would you take the Lord’s name to my face? How dare you!” Her scowl blackened and her bulldog eyes snapped with indignation. “If you come into my service, that sort of talk won’t be tolerated. What kind of household did this great lady of Frome manage, then? A godless one, I’m bound, if you’re the result.”
    “Oh, no, ma’am, don’t be thinkin’ it! It’s a daycent garul I am, truly, only sometimes me tongue gets away from me. It’s because o’ me dear departed father.” She made it rhyme with “lamer.” “He were a good man at heart, but a terrible blasphemer. Naow when I’m in distress, like, out pops the very wards I used t’ scold ’im about.”
    “So you’re in distress, are you?”
    “I—” She thought fast. “Not distress, as you might say, but more like anxious. I was after stoppin’ in Axminster t’ visit me old friend Fanny, her as works as housemaid for th’ pastor’s wife, an’ while we was traipsin’ around the market fair in th’ taown, me pocket was picked! Pure an’