Free the maltese angel by Yelena Kopylova

and Saturday ones. "
    He now took her face between his hands as he said, I can understand that. Oh my dear, yes, I can understand that. To me, you are too
    fragile, too beautiful, too nice
    for that type of life; and if you want to dance, well, I'll take you to a dance every week. There's the Assembly Rooms in Newcastle;
    there's the .. "
    She laughed and, taking his hands from her face, said, "I don't think I would care for that kind of dancing. I don't need people, you know, to enable me to dance. Oh ... I am not expressing myself well. But look She turned and pointed to the field where the hay was spread and she said, " I could very easily dance through your hay. But, of course, I should have to have slightly thicker shoes on than when on the stage.
    "
    He laughed with her now, saying, "Aye, that would be a sight; I would love to see it. But ... but, Fanny' again he had hold of her hands' if it's just dancing you want for your own pleasure I'd build some
    place.
    "Look ..." He didn't continue, but quickly taking her hand, ran her along by the wall, round a copse of trees, and through a piece of
    woodland; and then, pulling her to a breathless stop, he pointed into the distance, saying, "Look yonder. That's the back of the hams; but look there!" He now threw his arm out to the right and towards a strip of high stone wall as he said, "That could be the very thing." Still holding her hand, he drew her towards what she now made out to be some kind of glass-fronted lean-to. The wall was all of ten feet high and forty feet long. Fronting it was an eight-foot structure still
    holding, here and there, panes of glass.
    "That," he said, pointing to it, 'could be your own theatre. I'd have it done up. It used to be a vinery. My great-grandfather built it.
    Some say the wall was the end of a house that once stood there; but there's nothing in the deeds about it. Anyway, with the price of milk and meat changing so much in his early days, my father had to cut down on labour, and it was let go until it is as you see now. But the
    structure's fine. Come and look into it. "
    He now beat a way with his boots through the tangled grass; and when they both stood in the doorless aperture, looking along the length of the building, the floor padded with the rotted foliage of years and yet still sprouting new growth, some of it reaching almost to the top of the wall, he said, "It's a mess now, I admit, but I can see it being a fine place. There's a sketch of it somewhere in the house that my
    great-grandfather did when the vines were still covering the whole place, the grapes on it as big as plonkers." He now laughed down on her, saying, "You don't know what plonkers are?"
    "No, I don't."
    "Well, they're what the lads call large marbles, the outsize ones."
    Her smile was soft as she stood gazing up at him without speaking, yet her mind was racing over the words Mrs. Killjoy had spoken to her just before he had arrived to bring them on the journey here.
    "Don't let him slip through your hands, me dear," she had said.
    "You're so young;
    you know really nothing of life. You've been on the boards practically since you could walk, but still you know nothing of life . and men, and I'm telling you, it is my opinion you'll not find a better. He's too . I won't say simple, because there's nothing simple about him; but he's too straightforward to be bad. His tongue is not false; nor is his face; and there are those, you know, who appear to be gentlemen, whose words are coated with butter; only something in the eyes gives them away. This I have lea mt And there's nothing in that countryman's eyes that warns me of any treachery one way or the other.
    What's more, he's no boy, he's a man of twenty-five, and looks older than his years. All right. All right. " Mrs. Killjoy's voice was ringing in Fanny's ears now, repeating the words she herself had
    spoken.
    "You say you don't love him, not as you would expect to about the man you intend to marry. But that