Read Online Joy and Josephine by Monica Dickens - Free Book Online

thinking of your baby starting out in life with a cloud of tragedy over it.’ she gloomed.
    ‘Perhaps the children kept you awake,’ said Mrs Abinger cheerfully.
    ‘You never heard such a shindy as they made this morning. And the nurses – talk about clattering cans and heavy shoes! But it wasn’t that. I couldn’t have slept had I been in my grave. I couldn’t fancy a mouthful of breakfast this morning. My sister was quite upset.’
    ‘Poor soul,’ said Mrs Abinger, ‘she had a trying time of it yesterday. She is nice, Dot. I like her ever so much.’
    Miss Loscoe took this for granted. ‘She’s the mainstay of that harum-scarum establishment, I can see,’ she said dauntlessly. ‘Why, if it hadn’t been for her knowing about the crucifix – ’
    ‘By the by, Dot,’ interrupted Mrs Abinger, ‘there’s no need to mention the little cross to George should you see him. You know how he is about such things; he thinks it’s superstitious. He won’t stand for Catholics.’
    ‘I shouldn’t dream of it,’ said Miss Loscoe. ‘I’m sure it’s no concern of mine. I was merely going to remark that if it had not been for my sister, we shouldn’t be straightened out yet.’
    ‘No, that’s right,’ said Mrs Abinger, glad of the chance to resurrect the toppled legend of Miss Loscoe’s sister. ‘She’s got a head on her shoulders all right. And she doesn’t have it tooeasy, does she, with Matron so funny tempered? I’m sure I’d have walked out long ago.’
    ‘And let them down? She would never do that.’ Miss Loscoe cleared her throat, and looked severely at Mrs Abinger, daring her to challenge the coming lie. ‘My sister,’ she said, ‘told me that Matron had said this morning she didn’t know where they would be without her.’

2
    ‘Yes, and
Mum-may.’
Billy Moore hung round his mother’s dressing-table while she was trying to do her hair. ‘I want to tell you something.’
    ‘Get on with it then,’ she said, in the slight drawl which she had copied years ago from a girl at Roedean, and never lost. ‘And don’t fiddle with that scent bottle.’
    ‘I’m not. I want to tell you something. Mum-may – ’ His stories always took hours. ‘Well, you know Mrs Abinger.’
    ‘At the Corner Stores? I ought to, after eight years.’
    ‘Well, do you know, she’s got a baby. A girl one. She let me play with it when I went into the back-room to get some currants. And Mummy, I do wish we could have a baby like that.’
    ‘We’ve got one, darling. Surely that’s trouble enough? Leave that scent bottle
alone.’
    ‘Yes, but Wilf’s a boy, and he’s ugly. And Tess is too old to play with. Mummy, I do think Mrs Abinger’s lucky. Her baby has much prettier clothes than ours.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Mrs Moore twiddled up a side curl, cocked an eye at her reflection, shook her head, and combed the curl out again. In the mirror, she saw a figure like Mrs Tittlemouse come into the room.
    ‘Here’s Nanny,’ she said. ‘It’s bedtime.’
    ‘I want you to read to me.’ Twice usurped in the nursery, Billy had to be demanding of his rights.
    ‘I’m going out, so it’s no use making that face. I never knew Mrs Abinger had a baby, Nanny,’ she said to the grey little old nurse waiting in the doorway. ‘I should have thought she was a bit old …’
    ‘So should I, ’m, but you’d be surprised what some women can manage. The Deaconess was forty-seven turned, when she had her twins.’
    ‘It seems so funny we didn’t know about it.’
    ‘It does indeed. But she’s stout at the best of times, and always being behind the counter, you see …’
    ‘When do you suppose she had it?’
    ‘It looks a good five-month baby to me.’ Nanny moved her lips calculating. ‘It will have been at the Easter, I daresay, when we were away.’
    She saw Billy looking from one to the other of them, forming a question. His mother would have let him ask it, and given him a grown-up answer, but Nanny