Charles Palliser Read Online Free Page B

waiting.
    “Why, shame on you, Master Johnnie!” Bissett exclaimed. “He said no such thing.
    You know you mustn’t tell stories.”

    14 THE

    HUFFAMS

    “But Mrs Belflower tells stories!” I cried.
    “I’m sure I hope she does not,” Bissett said gravely.
    “But everybody does: Mamma reads me stories and Mrs Belflower tells me them and even Sukey. Everyone does but you,” I added bitterly.
    My mother said quickly: “But we don’t say they’re true when they’re not, Johnnie.”
    Bissett commented darkly: “The child has a deal too much fancy, that’s what it is.”
    “ ’Tis a terrible thing,” Mrs Belflower put in diplomatically, “when dacent folks is harassed and parsecuted in their own houses by such ruffians.”
    “It usen’t to happen. I nivver heard on it when I wor a gal,” Bissett agreed. “ ’Tis all them Irishers workin’ on the new ’pike — besides all them that come over for the harvest now. I don’t know why they can’t stay in their own country for they do us no good here but take the bread from the mouths of honest Englishmen.”
    “Why mayn’t I see the turnpike?” I cried, reminded by her words of an ancient grievance.
    “I don’t believe he was Irish,” said my mother quietly, while Mrs Belflower sympathetically slipped into my hand a small piece of ginger-bread.
    “No?” said Bissett. “Well, for sartin he wasn’t a this-country-man by his speech. It weren’t the speech of a Christen man, hardly.”
    “He was from London,” my mother said.
    “London,” I repeated. I had not heard the word before and the flat, slightly metallic syllables were oddly mysterious.
    “Aye,” said Bissett. “That seems like enough for that’s a place where folks aren’t safe in their own houses, by all accounts.”
    My mother started and turned pale: “What do you mean?”
    Bissett looked at her shrewdly: “Do you not rec’lleck that terrible business a few year back, Mrs Mellamphy? It must have been around about the year Master Johnnie was born or a little a-fore that.”
    My mother stared at her in dismay.
    “Aye,” said Mrs Belflower. “Along the Ratcliffe-highway, you mean, when two famblies was murdered as they slept in their beds.”
    “Aye, you’ve hit it. And there was another, too, about that time — or was it earlier? —
    when a rich old man was murdered by his own son, or somethin’ o’ that natur’,” Bissett put in and my mother turned away. “It was at Charing-cross. Is that near the Ratcliffe-highway?” My mother said nothing and Bissett went on: “So what I say is, ma’am, to be on the safe side, send that gal for the constable and he’ll see that tramper out o’ the parish.”
    My mother spoke with her back still turned to us: “I don’t believe that’s necessary, nurse. He’s best left alone.”
    “Anyways, she ain’t here,” Mrs Belflower objected. “She’s gone down to ’Ougham to visit her uncle.” (I might add here that the villagers always referred to “going down” to Hougham even though that village was on higher ground — for the stream that passed through Mortsey-wood behind our house ran down from there — as if to visit the village involved a moral lapse.) “The poor old man was took of a fever last night. They heard about it at home just now and sent young Harry round to fetch her down there.”
    “What, upped and gone without no by-your-leave?” Bissett exclaimed. “That gal takes a deal too many liberties. When will she be back?”

    A WISE CHILD

    15

    “She only left a minute ago,” said Mrs Belflower, rather resentfully.
    Between her and Bissett there existed a state of permanent though rarely overt hostility. As England and Russia have long struggled for mastery along the border from Constantinople to the North-west Frontier, so these two faced each other from their domains of kitchen and nursery and struggled for the upper hand throughout a range of less clearly defined spheres of influence. Sukey was