Free The Looking Glass House by Vanessa Tait

about the same things often, running on their thousand legs down the same paths in her brain: the purpose of her life, the appearance of someone to save her, the possibility of marriage. She sometimes felt as if she had ants in her skull.
    ‘I quite agree! Mr Darwin and his acolytes ought to be sent somewhere far away so that they can stop poisoning the minds of the general population. And children!’
    ‘Quite, quite, Miss Prickett,’ said Mr Wilton, looking her over again.
    Mary looked away, blushing. His low brow and broad shoul­ders, his hair that pushed out beneath his cuffs, all left an uncomfortable imprint on her retinas. She said with more force than usual: ‘I have never seen an ape give birth to a human, or heard of it. And nowhere else in nature does one animal turn into another.’
    ‘You have read up on it, I see,’ said Mr Wilton.
    Mary nodded. There was a further thing: if Mr Darwin was right, there could not be a God, at least in the way that she understood Him. And there was most certainly a God, at the end of life, to divide the sheep from the goats. That was the purpose of a good life. Her struggle must, in the end, be acknowledged. Otherwise Mary could let her thoughts run on into the night, full of petty resentments and jealousies, and on certain occasions hatred. For it was so easy to hate! Sometimes she just had to walk down the street to see a man she hated for no more than the way his eyes flickered over her face and away again, or a woman stepping out of a carriage in a pair of calfskin boots, or a child being luxuriously embraced by its mother.
    But she hacked these thoughts off at the stem, when she caught them, for fear that God might be listening. God knows everything, as her mother always said. He can see what you do alone in your room, He can see into your bed at night. Mary had the idea, when she was a child, that God would like her to sleep very straight in bed, with her legs and arms directly up and down. When she woke in the morning to find herself on her side and her limbs crooked, she always felt as if she had failed Him.
    But she must try to be good, and try to make the children good, even if it was a struggle against human nature.
    ‘Perhaps you would like to come to my church?’ said Mr Wilton.
    They had left the museum and were walking home. Mary squinted up at Tom Tower; it looked as if it had been pulled upwards by celestial fingers.
    ‘Your church?’
    ‘Yes, it is on the outskirts of Oxford. I could meet you here and we could go on together.’
    ‘Which church is it?’
    ‘A Christian church. God’s own church, I believe.’ Mr Wilton was walking quickly but his head was turned towards her and his eyebrows were raised. ‘I think you would find it enlighten­ing.’ He smiled. ‘In view of our recent conversation.’
    Mary could see Mrs Chitterworth approaching from the opposite direction. She smiled back at him with a thrum high up in her chest. ‘Yes, Mr Wilton. I would be pleased to accompany you.’
    ‘You look exceedingly happy, Mr Wilton,’ said Mrs Chitterworth. ‘What has happened?’
    Mr Wilton coloured. ‘Nothing. I mean – not nothing. We are .  .  .’ He trailed off.
    Mrs Chitterworth cocked her head and shook her ringlets, like a spaniel with water in its ear.
    ‘We are just returning from the Science Museum,’ said Mary.
    ‘Oh, that place! Nothing in there of any interest, I’ll be bound. And these must be your charges.’ Mrs Chitterworth nodded at the children without seeing them. ‘But you have caught me on my way to the pharmacist; I have an inflammation of the eyelid. Do you see?’
    ‘It does look red,’ said Mary.
    ‘Have you seen Lady Tetbury at the Deanery? She has grown very thin, they say on account of unhappiness.’
    ‘I have not,’ said Mary. ‘Why is she unhappy?’
    Mr Wilton shifted beside her.
    ‘They say on account of her husband.’ Mrs Chitterworth leaned closer. ‘I wouldn’t like to speculate on him.