Octavia Read Online Free

couldn’t say. Perhaps we should take the advice of the good Dean Swift and make roast joints and meat pies of them.’
    The agency maids were so shocked that they forgot they weren’t supposed to gasp, but fortunately the guests were laughing so loudly that nobody noticed.
    ‘On the whole,’ J-J said when the noise had subsided a little, ‘I think I would prefer not to eat my Octavia. At least not yet. So what is to be done with her?’
    ‘If you must send her to school,’ Mrs Bland advised, ‘make sure it is one that will encourage her to think and allow her space and time to develop.’
    ‘That is my opinion entirely,’ Amy said, ‘but where are we to find such a place?’
    ‘I’m told there is a very good girls school in Hampstead,’ Mrs Bland said. ‘The North London Collegiate School. It’s a little out of the way but you might consider it.’
    ‘We might indeed,’ Amy agreed, smiling at her husband and thinking, we could move house and then we would be nearer. This house is far too small for all the people he invites into it. The nursery is positively cramped and you can barely turn round in his study, and Mrs Wilkins really ought to have a bigger kitchen for all these dinner parties. It’s high time we had something better. She would have to be tactful about suggesting it, for she knew – who better? – how stubborn he could be and how resistant he was to change, despite the versatility of his mind. But then, glancing at him again, she noticed that he was beginning to get upset so the subject had to be dropped. Dear J-J, she thought. He simply can’t bear the thought of handing his darling over to someone else. He’ll be stubborn about that too. But it will have to be done sooner or later. Education is too important to be left to one person, however loving.

CHAPTER THREE
    Octavia was looking forward to her first great adventure. Mama said she was a very privileged little girl to be given such an opportunity, and although she wasn’t quite sure what being privileged meant nor what an opportunity was, she knew it was something good because of the sound of Mama’s voice when she told her.
    ‘You’ve learnt to read and write quite splendidly,’ Mama said one afternoon when they were snuggled up together on the big settee in the drawing room, ‘and you can do all your sums, thanks to Papa, and now you’re eight years old and I’ve got something quite wonderful to tell you. In September, when you are nine, your papa and I are going to let you go to school. Think of that! You’ll be able to learn all sorts of things at school – History and Geography and French and Botany and Science. The headmistress is the first lady ever to become a Doctor of Science. The very first. Won’t it be grand?’
    Octavia agreed that it would be. Very grand. But, as she found out in the next few days, it was also going to be complicated, for besides being sent to school it seemed theywere all going to move house and live in another part of London.
    ‘It’s a fine big house,’ her father told her, ‘which will be better for all of us, but it will be an upheaval for your mama so I must be quite sure it is a wise move. You do want to go to school, don’t you?’
    She assured him that she did, very much, but instead of smiling as she expected, he looked away from her and sighed, which was very odd.
    ‘You must be very good on moving day,’ he warned. ‘You must do as you’re told in every particular. Do you promise me?’
    Of course she did, most earnestly.
    ‘If everything goes as it should,’ he said, ‘I will take you up to London to see the Jubilee. How would you like that?’
    Oh, she would, very, very much. The Jubilee was going to be the finest show that London had ever seen. It said so in the papers. There was going to be a grand parade with thousands of soldiers and hundreds of horses and people were coming to take part in it from all over the Empire because the queen had been reigning for sixty