Free Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters Page A

Butler now; anyone might guess I stood in the gathering shadows and put my trembling that, having once been offered the chance of a future at her fingers before my face. I had taken to scrubbing my hands side, and kept from it, I could never return to my father's very carefully, since meeting Kitty Butler; and if they were kitchen and be happy there, as I had been before.
    ever a little stained at the creases now, it was as much with So when, an hour or so after Kitty's departure, I nervously paint and hot-black and blanc-de-perle, as with vinegar.
    put her plan before my parents, and argued and pleaded for Even so, there was the scent of oysters on them still, and a their blessing, they listened to me wonderingly, but slender thread - it might have been the bristle from the back carefully; and when, the next day, Father stopped me on my of a lobster, the whisker from a shrimp - beneath one of my way down to the kitchen to draw me into the parlour where nails. How would it be, I thought, to surrender my family, it was quiet and still, his face was sad and serious, but kind.
    my home, all my oyster-girl's ways?
    He asked me, first, whether I had not changed my mind? I And how would it be to live at Kitty's side, brim-full of a shook my head, and he sighed. He said, if I was quite love so quick, and yet so secret, it made me shake?
    decided, then Mother and he could not keep me; that I was a grown-up woman, almost, and should be allowed to know Chapter 3
    my own mind; that they had thought to see me marry a I wish, for sensation's sake, I could say that my parents Whitstable boy, and settle close at hand, and so have a heard one word of Kitty's proposal and forbade me, share in my little happinesses and troubles - but that now, absolutely, to refer to it again; that when I pressed the he supposed, I would go and hitch up with some London matter, they cursed and shouted; that my mother wept, my fellow, who wouldn't understand their ways at all.
    father struck me; that I was obliged, in the end, to climb 63

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    But children, he concluded, weren't made to please their her dresser for a few nights while I made all ready . . . and I parents; and no father should expect to have his daughter at finished it 'Fondly', and signed it, 'Your Nan'.
    his side for ever ... 'In short, Nance, even was you going to I had to be glad only in snatches that day, for the scene that the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see I had passed with Father, after breakfast, had to be you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and undergone again with Mother - who hugged me to her, and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.' I cried that they must be fools to let me go; and Davy - who had never known him so grave before, nor so eloquent. I said, quite absurdly, that I was too little to go to London, had never seen him weep either; but now as he spoke his and would be run down by a tram in Trafalgar Square the eyes glistened, and he blinked, twice or thrice, to hold the minute I set foot in it; and Alice - who said nothing at all tears back, and his voice grew thin. I placed my head when she heard the news, but ran from the kitchen in tears, against his shoulder and let my own tears rise and spill. He and could not be persuaded to take up her duties in the put an arm about me, and patted me. 'It breaks our hearts to Parlour until lunch-time. Only my cousins seemed happy lose you, dear,' he went on. 'You know it does. Only for me - and they were more jealous than happy, calling me promise us that you won't forget us, quite. That you'll write a lucky cat, and swearing that I would make my fortune in to us, and visit us. And that, if things don't turn out as you the city, and forget them all; or else that I would be ruined might, quite, wish them, you won't be too proud to come utterly, and come sneaking back to them in disgrace.
    home to those that love you -' Here his voice failed utterly, That week passed quickly.