Read Online Never Look Back by Lesley Pearse - Free Book Online Page A

much.
    ‘To be the Queen would be dandy,’ she joked to hide her sudden nervousness.
    Giles smiled. He found this girl puzzling, by rights she ought to be either cowed or wily enough to be demanding something of them. Yet apart from a slight wariness in her eyes as she answered their questions, she seemed innocently comfortable.
    ‘I’d be ’appy to work in a shop or be a maid,’ Matilda addedquickly. ‘But I don’t s’pose anyone would take me on. I don’t look or sound right, do I?’
    There was no reply to this. Giles just looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows. She thought that was confirmation they agreed with her.
    In point of fact, before Matilda had been summoned, the Milsons had been discussing how they should reward this girl. Lily had felt a shilling, a few groceries and the clothes they’d already given her were sufficient. Giles had pointed out that would be no lasting good, and suggested asking one of their wealthier parishioners to take her on as a scullery maid, or perhaps get her a position in the big laundry in Camden Town. But now, faced with her clean and neat appearance, the intelligence in her face, the lack of evasion to their questions, and discovering she could read and write, it seemed to Giles that she was heaven-sent as a nursemaid for Tabitha.
    Giles knew only too well that he was being impulsive, and that he should consult his wife before speaking out. Yet if he did he knew she’d throw up a hundred different objections. Even if he could persuade her to consider it seriously, during the waiting period Matilda would be back selling flowers and probably lost to them for good.
    Throwing caution to the wind, Giles decided to act on his own initiative. Lily would doubtless punish him for it with one of her long, cold sulks afterwards, but he told himself that the end justified the means, Lily needed help with Tabitha, and quickly.
    ‘How would you like to work here, Matilda, as a nursemaid for Tabitha?’ he blurted out. ‘Mrs Milson has been under a great strain with her duties as parson’s wife and mother. I believe you would be ideal for us.’
    ‘Would I like to work here?’ Matilda forgot herself and bounded out of her chair. ‘I’d like it more than anything in the whole world.’
    Giles heard Lily’s sharp intake of breath, felt her anger at his not consulting her first, but faced with the girl’s exuberance, he knew he’d made a rational decision.
    ‘Have you ever been to church, or read the Scriptures?’ Lily said in a starchy tone. She liked the look of the girl herself, and was so grateful to her for saving Tabitha she felt she must be rewarded, but she was deeply shocked by her husband’simpetuosity. Yet a wife couldn’t speak out in public against her husband. She would have to wait until they were alone to upbraid him for it.
    ‘Never ’ad no time or the clothes for church,’ Matilda beamed. ‘Not since me mother died, anyways. But I learned to read from Miss Agnew’s Bible. I liked the story of David and Goliath.’
    Lily pursed her lips in disapproval. She didn’t like the Bible thought of in the same light as a ‘penny dreadful’. ‘Of course if you do come here as nursemaid we shall have to instruct you on the Scriptures,’ she said tartly.
    The sharpness of the woman’s tone cooled Matilda’s excitement. All at once she saw that the offer had come only from the parson, not his wife, and although she wanted to work here so badly she would sell her soul for it, she knew that without Lily’s approval of her she’d be out on her ear at the first mistake she made.
    ‘I’ll ’ave to talk about it to my father first,’ she said after a moment’s reflection. ‘I mean, if I ain’t there, who’ll mind the boys?’
    Giles guessed the real cause of her prevarication and such sensitivity endeared her to him even more.
    ‘Of course you must speak to your father,’ he said, casting a warning glance at his wife. ‘Just as my wife and I must be