Read Online Orphan Bride by Sara Seale - Free Book Online Page B

shall uncomfort thee:
    We’ll join our hands in wedded bands
    And a-ma r ried we will be.”
    She stopped singing, and edged away to her stool by the fire. Julian lifted his hands from the keys and examined them thoughtfully.
    “You like that song, don’t you?” he said then.
    “Yes, I like it.”
    “You shall sing it for me again,” he said, and shut the piano abruptly.
    He made n o comment or criticism on her voice, but he brushed a band lightly over her hair as he limped past her to the door.
     

 
    CHAPTER F I V E
    The halcyon days continued for a little while longer. If it was wet Jennet stopped indoors worrying as to how the Thompson household was managing without her, but unless the rain was coming down too hard to make walking on the moor a reasonable pastime, she set off every day after breakfast, her thoughts full of the possible jobs that might be awaiting her.
    Betty was back at school now, and Mrs. Thompson came downstairs for a few hours each day. She did not talk much, but her rough kindliness was apparent in her small unconscious gestures of affection towards her children and towards Jennet herself.
    “Do your people know you come here?” she asked her once.
    “ No,” said Jennet, and when Mrs. Thompson gave her a level look, added pleadingly:
    “It’s so difficult to explain. I don’t think Aunt Emily would mind, but Cousin Julian—he runs my life, chooses my friends and—and—this is the one thing I’ve found for myself. Cousin Julian would never understand! ”
    Mrs. Thompson was silent for a moment.
    “I’ve never rightly understood about your Cousin Julian,” she said slowly. “It would seem that he has certain rights over you since he took you from an institution, but no one has the right to run another’s life. You might be better off where you came from, Jennet. What are they fitting you for with this kind of life? What are they going to do with you?”
    “I don’t know, myself,” said Jennet humbly.
    Frankie was home from work for a few days with a poisoned hand, and in the evening he would walk back with Jennet across the moor. Then he would tell her something of the family history. How Mrs. Thompson, despite her husband’s infidelity, had stuck to him and made some kind of a home for him to come back to.
    “He is m y father,” Frankie said quietly, “and she’s only my stepmother, but she’s worth ten of the old man. I reckon a man doesn’t know when he’s got a good homemaker. You’re another such, Jennet. You will make some fellow a good wife, a good home-maker.”
    She did not answer, but the phrase meant suddenly for her all the affection, the sense of belonging that she had missed all her life. She put a shy hand on his arm.
    “Dear Frankie,” she said softly, “some day you will mean all those things to some woman.”
    He did not understand her reluctance to reveal what she was doing at home. Once, with a rare spurt of anger, he asked her if she was ashamed of them.
    “Oh, Frankie, no ,” she cried, immeasurably distressed. “Never think that. You and the children are my only friends. It is just that they ask questions and everything would be spoilt. Please, try to understand.”
    But she could see that he did not, and only looked hurt when she refused to go to the cinema with him.
    “Why not?” he asked impatiently.
    “A un t Emily would ask questions, and if she asked questions I couldn’t lie to her.”
    “But why should you have to? Why can’t you say like any other girl. ‘Aunt Emily, I want to go to the pictures with a friend.’ ”
    She looked distressed.
    “You don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t think Aunt E m ily would mind, but she would tell Cousin Jul ian and he might stop me coming here altogether.”
    “But why on earth should he? Where’s the harm?”
    “I don’t know, but I think he would. He once told me I was never to pick up with anyone he didn’t know about, and I feel he would be angry. He’s queer. He