"I assure you, I always find the children well and happy, and it is very

unfair on the matron to be angry with her for being bound by rules, to

which she must submit, or she would transgress the regulations under

which we have laid her! It is not her choice to exclude you, but her

duty."

"Please, ma'am, was it her duty to be coming out of the house in a

'genta coloured silk dress, and a drab bonnet with a pink feather in

it?" said Mrs. Kelland, with a certain, air of simplicity, that provoked

Rachel to answer sharply-"You don't know what you are talking about, Mrs. Kelland."

"Well, ma'am, it was a very decent woman as told me, an old lady of the

name of Drinkwater, as keeps a baker's shop on the other side of the

way, and she never sees bread enough go in for a cat to make use of,

let alone three poor hungry children. She says all is not right there,

ma'am."

"Oh, that must be mere gossip and spite at not having the custom. It

quite accounts for what she may say, and indeed you brought it all on

yourself by not having asked me for a note. You must restrain yourself.

What you may say to me is of no importance, but you must not go and

attack those who are doing the very best for your niece."

Rachel made a dignified exit, but before she had gone many steps, she

was assailed by tearful Mrs. Morris: "Oh, Miss Rachel, if it would not

be displeasing to you, would you give me an order for my child to come

home. Ours is a poor place, but I would rather make any shift for us to

live than that she should be sent away to some place beyond sea."

"Some place beyond sea!"

"Yes, ma'am. I beg your pardon, ma'am, but they do say that Mr.

Maw-and-liver is a kidnapper, ma'am, and that he gets them poor

children to send out to Botany Bay to be wives to the convicts as are

transported, Miss Rachel, if you'll excuse it. They say there's a whole

shipload of them at Plymouth, and I'd rather my poor Mary came to the

Union at home than to the like of that, Miss Rachel."

This alarm, being less reasonable, was even more difficult to talk

down than Mrs. Kelland's, and Rachel felt as if there wore a general

conspiracy to drive her distracted, when on going home she found the

drawing-room occupied by a pair of plump, paddy-looking old friends, who

had evidently talked her mother into a state of nervous alarm. On her

entrance, Mrs. Curtis begged the gentleman to tell dear Rachel what

he had been saying, but this he contrived to avoid, and only on his

departure was Rachel made aware that he and his wife had come, fraught

with tidings that she was fostering a Jesuit in disguise, that Mrs.

Rawlins was a lady abbess of a new order, Rachel herself in danger of

being entrapped, and the whole family likely to be entangled in the

mysterious meshes, which, as good Mrs. Curtis more than once repeated,

would be "such a dreadful thing for poor Fanny and the boys."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024