Free Hope by Lesley Pearse

make sense.
    The clanging of the church bell became louder and louder as they walked down the hill into the village. Nell was holding her father’s arm; Hope and her mother were behind them. There was no one else to wave to the little party because almost everyone in the village would already be at the church.
    ‘Stop dawdling, Hope,’ Meg called out, ‘you’ll make us late!’
    Hope ran to her mother and took her hand. ‘How long will it be before Nell has a baby?’ she asked.
    ‘That’s for the Lord to decide,’ Meg replied, but she looked down at Hope and smiled. ‘Don’t ask any more questions like that today either.’
    Hope peeped through her fingers while she was supposed to be praying. The church looked very pretty as that morning some of the women in the village had fixed garlands of flowers around the pulpit and on the end of each pew. But it was strange to see all the neighbours and friends from the village sitting in the front pews where the gentry usually sat. Mr and Mrs Calway were there, and the whole of the Nichols family, the Carpenters from Nutgrove Farm, Mr Humphreys, the Pearces, Boxes, Webbs, Wilkinses, even Maria Jeffries, the barmy old lady who walked her goat on a lead around the village. Hope had asked her mother where Sir William and Lady Harvey and Rufus were going to sit when they came, but all she said was that they didn’t go to servants’ weddings. Hope didn’t understand that. Nell looked after Lady Harvey, and Albert made the garden nice for her. So surely they should come here today to make things nice for Nell and Albert?
    ‘I’ll be nasty to Rufus next time I go to Briargate,’ she promised herself.
    She still went to play with him on Monday afternoons, unless the weather was bad. Sometimes she got fed up with him because although he was five now, he was still such a baby. She understood that was because he hadn’t got brothers and sisters like her, and he’d never done anything or gone anywhere on his own the way she had when she was five, but it was still annoying. Yet she liked looking at all his books, and took pleasure in being able to read them to him. She also liked drawing and painting with him and playing hide-and-seek in the garden.
    But above all she loved going to Briargate. Just walking up the big staircase to the nursery made her feel she was a special guest. It was so good to see all those beautiful pictures, to touch polished wood and velvet curtains and enter into a world that was so different to the one she came from.
    She didn’t think Nell, James and Ruth felt that way, but perhaps that was because they were servants. They were always quick to take her into the kitchen, as though they were reminding her that was where she belonged. But then she liked the kitchen just as much as the rest of the house. It was good to see food they never had at home, to observe the care Cook took in preparing meals, and she rarely came out of there without something to take home – a pie, a cake or a jar of preserves.
    Then there was Lady Harvey. Hope thought she had to be the loveliest lady in the land. Her golden hair, blue eyes, soft voice and wonderful gowns were enough on their own, but she was so nice too, and always made a fuss of her.
    Nell and Albert were kneeling in front of the altar now. Nell looked so different with her hair down; Mother had washed it for her last night, and twisted it all up in rags to make it curl. Hope had never seen it look so shiny and bouncy, and the little crown of flowers was very pretty. She decided that when she was grown up she’d have her hair like that every day.
    She turned her head slightly to look at Alice and Toby in the pew behind her and grinned at them. She was thrilled they’d managed to come as they didn’t get home very often because it was so far from Bath. Alice had whispered at the church door that they’d walked all the way, and would have to walk back tomorrow, but it was worth it. She also added that she had