Free Feral Park by Mark Dunn Page B

depend on it!”
    “Is it because I have a mother and you have not?”
    Anna considered the theory and found more than a tincture of merit to it. “Do you think that it is jealousy?”
    “Perhaps.”
    “Yet you do not treat me in a similar fashion, Gemma, for being without a father whilst my own lives and breaths and doats upon me.”
    “Aye. But a mother is a different sort of creature, offering a different sort of love—a tender and suckling kind of love, and you have none. There. I believe that the mystery is hereby solved, and now that you know why you act sometimes so sharply and petulantly and cruelly toward me, you must think to yourself, ‘It is no fault of Gemma’s that my mother ended her life early by placing herself foolishly beneath the hoof of a horse.’”
    “There is perhaps some truth to what you say, Gemma, although I would not have put it the way you did, which makes my mother sound like a ninny.”
    “Be that as it may, now that you know what drives you to whip me with the scolding stick and take the broom of rebuke and thrust its prickly bristles at my tender bottom, you will check yourself in future, so that our friendship may again breathe freely?”
    In a low voice, Anna replied, “My mother was not a ninny.”
    “I did not say that she was. You likened her to one. May we turn the subject, Anna? I am growing weary.”
    The two friends walked on for a moment without speaking, whilst receiving the encompassing sounds of cheeping and chirruping and peddlerhawking and cart-wheel trundling and chicken-clucking and close-by canterclopping-upon-pavement-stones and distant-down-mooing and near-flock bahing and brash goose-honking and cadging dog-pule-barking and someone hammering and someone else sawing and someone happy-hallooing and a baby mewling and two old women somewhere nearby chattering about nothing important—nothing at all—not like Anna and Gemma, who must attend the serious business of repairing the rent in their long friendship this bright and sunny-warm and floral-redolent and pungent made-hay-smelling Tuesday afternoon. Stopping at a road marker, Anna turned to her companion and said, “I still feel, Gemma, that you require proof of my most heartfelt friendship and of my intention to preserve that friendship against the jealousy you say I indulge beyond my control. I will therefore tell you something that will surely command your most attentive interest and I will conclude my account by seeking your enlistment in my plan to right a terrible wrong. We shall be full partners, should you chuse to join my efforts. And I do so wish that you will say yes, for I require your assistance most greatly—as greatly as I require your devoted friendship in reciprocity.”
    “I am all ears, Anna,” said Gemma (who was only one ear in rigid truth, but it was only an expression and so Anna did not make comment). Gemma’s face was all eagerness and anticipation, and Anna pressed her hand warmly into the hand of her best friend and then told her every syllable of the unfortunate circumstances of the three Henshawe sisters and their mother, except for the part about Sophia and the monkey parlour. As the two recommenced their stroll, Gemma replied that she knew one of the sisters quite well: the youngest, Eliza, as the two had played together as children. Gemma was on less familiar terms with Eliza’s older siblings and the mother, but because they were each tangentially related to her through the marriage of her uncle, Charles Quarrels (the father), to their aunt Lydia Quarrels, nee Henshawe, none of the four was a stranger to her. Anna found great convenience in this fact.
    “Then Charles Quarrels, the son, is your first cousin.”
    “Aye.”
    “And can you tell me, Gemma, any thing about the Misses Henshawe that would explain the dearth of marital prospects for each?” sought Anna.
    “I can answer your request with certainty: they are, each of them, quite ugly.”
    “Oh, dear. Now how