Free Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin

heart and sat down next to Mr. Bradshaw, who was in a jovial mood, teasing me about my young man in the park, with whom I must be spending my half-day pretty “vigorous,” as he put it, for I seemed worn out in his view.
    I only looked up from my food to say, with my whole heart behind it, “Mr. Bradshaw, I do wish that was the truth,” and we all had a dry laugh at my expense.
    T wo weeks has passed since last I writ, and I thought this morning that today is the day Master’s business with Mrs. Farraday must begin. I have spent many hours trying to coach myself on what that business might be, and I think I must have a good imaginationwhen I consider just how many stories I’ve come up with, some to Master’s credit and some that shock me for having appeared in my own head. Indeed I am in a bad way and weary from it all. Master is occupied much of the time, in his laboratory or visiting or having his friends in, and seems to think on those occasions when I am in the room with him that everything is as it has always been. I try to believe this myself and do my work with a good will, but I don’t believe it no matter how much I might try.
    It does seem to me that what Master has done is take rooms in that house, or perhaps the whole house, and that he has done this for someone else, someone Mrs. Farraday (if that is her name, for I doubt everything in my worst moments) knows and does not like.
    The only thing I do that lifts my spirits is work in the garden with Cook. We have managed several times to get in an hour in the early morning, or late in the day as the days is so long now, and many of our plants has their heads above the soil. Now an hour of work can make a noticeable order. The weather has been grey, unseasonable cold and wet, the coldest summer in many years, but our herbs and flowers seem to thrive upon it. We have parsley of two kinds—one curly, which Cook says she will use for garnish, and one with a flat leaf for cooking—rosemary, thyme, mint—a most hardy plant this is, as goes underground to jump up again in a space not its own, which Cook says is the nuisance of it and if we went away the whole garden would be only mint in no time—sage, garlic, and marigolds to prevent bugs,one border of pansies, not bloomed yet, and another of poppies, which are just coming up and so delicate I fear they won’t prosper, and two edges, one of lavender and one of foxglove. Cook has a little place in the centre for a boxwood, which she is looking out for, she says, as a present for me because it will bring a good marriage.
    Nothing is big enough to pick yet but we can see how it will look. There’s a deal of feeding and pinching and always weeding to be done, which Cook directs me in.
    Sometimes, if I’m not too busy, I go out after dinner just to look at it, and to smell the pleasant scent of the herbs which the damp air seems to blend into something that is all one, though I feel I can separate out each herb if I try. Yesterday as I was doing this, feeling it really is a blessing at such times to have a nose, though at others one may wish to close up a nose as we do our eyes when we don’t want to see, I heard Master passing along the closed passage that leads to the side street. I knew it must be Master as the passage has only one other door, which opens into the old theatre, yet the step did not sound like his but rather too heavy and uneven, dragging a little. Still, it must have been him, only my ears misled me or the hard flags of the passage mun distort the sound. He went along from the theatre, opened the door to the street, then went out.
    Why did this surprise me so, and why did I have a feeling of such gloom at the thought that Master comes and goes in his own house without our always knowing?Certain it would be unnecessary steps and trouble to cross the yard and walk through the house to the front door when this door is so much the more convenient.
    But, I thought, how much of the time that we