Free Legend of the Seventh Virgin by Victoria Holt

remark. I told myself that it was just another of Mrs. Yeo’s grumbles; but it was like a tiny dark cloud in a summer sky.
    As I walked through the village I saw Hetty Pengaster, the farmer’s daughter. Before that day I had set myself up for hire at Trelinket Fair I had thought of Hetty with envy. She was the farmer’s only daughter, although he had two sons — Thomas, who farmed with him, and Reuben, who worked at Pengrants the builders, and was that young man who had thought he had seen the seventh virgin when the Abbas wall collapsed and consequently had become piskey-mazed. Hetty was the darling of the household, plumply pretty in an overripe way which made the old women shake their heads prophetically and say that Pengasters ought to watch out that Hetty didn’t have a baby in a cradle before she had a wedding ring on her finger. I saw what they meant; it was in the way she walked, in the sidelong glances she gave the men, in the thick, sensuous lips. She always had a ribbon in her auburn hair and her dresses were always showy and low cut.
    She was all but affianced to Saul Cundy who worked in the Fedder mine. A strange alliance this would be — for Saul was a serious man who must have been some ten years older than Hetty. It would be a marriage approved of by her family, for Saul was no ordinary miner. He was known as Cap’en Saul and had the power to employ men; he was clearly a leader and one would have thought him scarcely the sort to come courting Hetty. Perhaps Hetty herself thought this and wanted to have some fun before settling down to sober marriage.
    She mocked me now. “Well, if it bain’t Kerensa Carlee — all dressed up and fit to kill.”
    I retorted in a tone I had learned from Mellyora: “I am visiting my Grandmother.”
    “Ooo! Are you then, me lady. Mind ’ee don’t soil your hands with the likes of we.”
    I heard her laughing as I went on and I didn’t mind in the least. In fact I was pleased. Why had I ever envied Hetty Pengaster? What was a ribbon in the hair, shoes on the feet, beside the ability to write and read and talk like a lady?
    I had rarely felt as happy as I did when I continued on my way to the cottage.
    I found Granny alone and her eyes shone with pride when she kissed me. No matter how much I learned I would never cease to love Granny and yearn for her approval.
    “Where’s Joe?” I asked.
    Granny was exultant.
    I knew Mr. Pollent, the vet, who had a good business out Molenter way? Well, he had called at the cottage. He had heard tell that Joe was good with animals and he could do with someone like that … someone who would work for him. He would train him and make a vet of him, maybe.
    “So Joe has gone to Mr. Pollent?”
    “Well, what do ’ee think? Twas a chance in a lifetime.”
    “A vet. I was planning for him to be a doctor.”
    “A vet has a very good profession, lovey.”
    “It’s not the same,” I replied wistfully.
    “Well, ’tis a start like. Get his keep for a year, then he’ll be paid. And Joe be happy as a king. Don’t think of nothing but they animals.”
    I repeated Granny’s words. “’Tis a start.”
    “’Tis a load off my mind, too,” Granny admitted. “Now I see you two settled like, I be at peace.”
    “Granny,” I said, “I reckon anything you want can be yours. Who’d have thought I’d be sitting here in buckled shoes and a gingham dress with lace at the collar.”
    “Who’d have thought it,” she agreed.
    “I dreamed it; and I wanted it so much that it came … Granny, it’s there, isn’t it? The whole world … it’s there if you know how to take it?”
    Granny put her hand over mine. “Don’t ’ee forget, lovey, life bain’t all that easy. What if someone else has the same dream? What if they do want the same piece of the world as you. You’ve had luck. It’s all along of parson’s daughter. But don’t ’ee forget that was chance; and there be good chance and bad chance.”
    I wasn’t really