Free The Observations by Jane Harris Page A

like she’d tell you to take the pips out an apple and then leave it for you to eat, or make you draw some water and then just pour it away into the dirt. If you asked her what you had done wrong and why she was angry she would smile at you very kind and say she wasn’t angry. And all the time she was watching watching watching you and afterwards she would scuttle up to her room and for a long time you would hear not a peep out her. About an hour later she would emerge looking much restored, I used to think she had been laying down for a nice nap.
    I always did my best to please her. Once or twice more in that first month she bid me sit on the straight back chair and told me to close my eyes and then it was the old game of stand up sit down stand up sit down, flip me could I see the sense in it, could I chook but I went along with it as far as I was able. The 2nd time she asked me I went up and down 10 times but more than that I would not do. On the 3rd occasion, I got to 26 times but on the 27th something in me rebelled and like the broken horse, I went down but would not get up. She was always pleased with me though and said encouraging things like, “Well done, Bessy, you are a good girl,” then tellt me to go back to my work.
    Despite these fickle moods, I was enjoying my new life, for it was as much of an adventure and as exotic to me as if I had travelled to live in the jungle of South America. We was right as rain, me and missus, rubbing along on our own together with work in the day and then at night punctuation and I fair tore through the reading books she give me.
Bleak House, Great Expectations, Pilgrims Progress, Justified Sinner,
I went through them all and more besides. Missus usually went to church of a Sunday and sometimes a Wednesday, truth be told she was C. of E. but the only congregation in those parts was “You Pee‘ and she only went for appearances sake. Needless to say I was not welcome, being R.C. and not one of the Chosen Ones, if I or any other ”Taig’ had walked into the church service at Snatter GOB KNOWS what would have happened. I expect the roof would blow off, the place explode and old Scratch himself climb up into the ruins and show everybody his jack and jewels and make them smell his bottom. (That’s probably what the locals thought anyway.)
    On the rare occasions I had no other chore to do, I used to keep missus company by walking her down the lane to church. I’d wait outside until the service was over and then walk home with her. Which was fine and nice except for when Biscuit Meek would come out at the end of the service and give me filthy looks. I knew now that he looked after the plough and horses at Castle Haivers and drove the carriage and he was a fierce man for his worship. It was a shame that the Lord never saw fit to give Biscuit a chin seeing as how he was one of his staunchest. He had a mouth built straight into his neck and his lips was always frothy and wet and turned down at the corners like he had just took a swig of the buttermilk but really all that froth and wet was just a sign
of religious fervour.
    Apart from him, there was not too many farm servants. It didn’t take long to work out that master James did not keep enough staff. In the house, they should have had a cook and probably a butler, a ladies maid and a housekeeper all this, but there was only me and I had so much to do, I hardly ever seen the other servants. I learned from missus that Alasdair the foreman ran the estate for master James. This Alasdair was married to Jessie the milkmaid and they lived in the farm up the back lane, along with her sister Muriel. Biscuit and Hector and any temporary workers that were hired stayed in the bothies beyond the woods. The only person I seen with any regularity was Hector when he came to the house to run errands. Once or twice I caught sight of the Curdle twins going up the lane or crossing the yard. But apart from that I was on my own. Or if I was lucky,