The Lantern Moon Read Online Free

sleepy.’
    â€˜It’s not my back. It’s my fingers that ache. My feet feel fizzy. My eyes are sore.’
    â€˜Poor Libby. Soon we can stop.’
    Libby’s eyes filled with tears. She climbed down off her chair and sat rocking on her heels on the floor.
    Downstairs there was a loud banging at the front door,four sharp knocks that showed the visitor meant to come in even though it was so late. Libby and her mother looked at each other in alarm.
    Mr Evans? thought Kezia, wondering if she dared ignore his knocking. Would he be so bold as to call on her at this time of night? She wished her son William was there. Then came a shout from a familiar voice.
    â€˜It’s Annie,’ cried Libby. ‘Annie has come home.’
    She jumped up, tossing the hated glove aside, and rushed down the stairs with her mother following close behind.
    â€˜They’ve let me come home for the night. I don’t have to be back at Dinham until six in the morning,’ said Annie as soon as her mother and her sister had stopped kissing and hugging her and let her speak. ‘And I have something for you: three slices of sultana cake.’
    â€˜Cake?’ squealed Libby, who had eaten nothing that day but some oatmeal at mid-day.
    â€˜Then I shall make tea,’ said her mother, ‘and you can tell us all the news from Dinham House. It is so good to see you, my pet, after so many weeks. I have been so anxious for you, alone among all those strange people.’
    â€˜Are there really princes and princesses where you work?’ asked Libby, when they were back in the upstairs room.
    â€˜Oh yes, ever so many of them. First there are two daughters of Prince Lucien by his first wife who died. They are called Charlotte and Christine-Egypta. Then there are two younger girls, Letitia and Jeanne and two little boys,Charles and Paul-Marie. I often have to bathe the littlest one and put him to bed. And there are lots of other people too, a nephew and a French priest who has come to England with them, and they are all so noisy! They all talk so loudly in their own language and sometimes they say things when I am in the room and they laugh and I go red. And, you know,’ she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, ‘the girls all wear beautiful silk dresses and their middles are never where their middles ought to be for they’re cut high up on their chests or else low down on their hips with pretty sashes.’
    Annie rattled on, all her news tumbling out in a rush for she had hardly heard the sound of her own voice in the three weeks since she had started work. While her mother made the tea, she told them about bossy Mrs Stringer and Arthur, the friendly footman.
    â€˜And what do you do there?’ asked Libby, picking out the currants from her slice of cake and popping them one by one into her mouth.
    â€˜Well,’ said Annie, thoughtfully. ‘First I clean the boots every morning – sometimes there are twenty pairs! Then I bring hot water up to the bedrooms and empty the chamber pots.’
    â€˜Yuck,’ said Libby, grinning. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
    â€˜You would if Mrs Stringer told you to. It’s “Do this, do that, stop dawdling,” all day long. “Annie Spears, take this tray, wash out those pots, polish those door handles, sweep out the kitchen floor and get a move on.”’ She mimicked the fat housekeeper’s whining voice.
    â€˜You’re too thin, Annie,’ Kezia said when Annie finally stopped talking. ‘Are they not giving you enough to eat up there in that fancy house?’
    Annie smiled. She was so pleased to be at home with her own family, listening to the familiar sound of the scissors snipping and the clack of her mother’s thimble as she tapped it on the table, watching the snippets of leather and thread collecting on the floorboards as her sister worked. But she also saw Libby’s peaked little white face, the