Free They Hanged My Saintly Billy by Robert Graves

she trusted in the kindness of God; showing in all her looks and actions the profoundest gratitude to Dr Knight and myself for the care bestowed on her. We had no scruple in referring to her as 'Annie Brookes', and thus keeping alive in her mind the nobler part of her natural inheritance.
    Soon after Annie's arrival in our house, my wife had the misfortune to be struck down by an incurable disease. Though still only a little girl, Annie insisted on acting as sick-nurse, and her intrinsic kindness of heart and constant vigilance by night as well as by day were something more than surprising. My poor wife's sufferings terminated six weeks later. Annie wept bitterly; and after a decent interval I married again, for the sake of my children. What I had done to deserve further chastening by Heaven, Heaven alone can say; but as the result of a fall on a slippery road my new wife miscarried in the first year of our marriage; and the complications of this accident were also mortal in their effect. Once again Annie played the ministering angel, and was constantly at the sufferer's sick-bed; not only to administer medicine and perform the often distasteful duties of a nurse, but to give her spiritual consolation in the dark hours of the night when sleep was far, and pain unabating. Indeed, Annie combined three noble professions in those sad months: those of doctor, nurse and clergyman. She was reduced to a mere shadow when my wife's death at last released her from these self-imposed tasks.
    I did my best to restore Annie's spirits, as soon as the period of mourning ended, by arranging treats and excursions for the family; and little by little her natural gaiety returned. But Dr Knight and I agreed that the time had come when she must go to a finishing school; and we unluckily decided upon one recommended by his cousin, Dr Tylecote of Haywood—the medical man whose then assistant was none other than William Palmer.
    Miss Bond's school enjoyed, and still enjoys, a high reputation for good schooling in all ladylike accomplishments—Annie learned to play the pianoforte there in a quite masterly way—and the girls were, it need hardly be added, under continuous surveillance. It happened once or twice, however, that Palmer, as Dr Tylecote's assistant, was sent to visit the school, when a girl had been overcome by a colic, or cut her finger, or had suffered some other slight accident which lay within Palmer's limited powers to alleviate. On one occasion the sufferer was Annie, and it appears that he treated a strained ligament in her ankle with such gentleness that she fell head over heels in love with him—though he had no suspicion of her feelings, being busily engaged at the time in an intrigue with a red-headed girl from Liverpool, the stepdaughter of a local gardener. Moreover, Annie happened to be very advantageously seated in church, for her pew commanded Palmer's profile at a short distance, straight across the aisle.
    My quarrel with Mr Weaver grew out of this unfortunate affair. His elder daughter had also been sent to Miss Bond's finishing school, and one day, in the course of general conversation, she chanced to reveal Axinie's secret attachment to Palmer, for which the girls were teasing her unmercifully. Weaver mentally noted the fact and, when Palmer was about to inherit his seven thousand pounds, and asked him to arrange for their conveyance, brought it out. 'Do you want a wife, Mr Palmer?' asks he. 'For if you do, I can introduce you to a very pretty young girl with a snug little fortune. She's a ward in Chancery. Colonel Brookes, her father, left her eight thousand pounds, which gives her a secure income of two hundred pounds a year.'
    'There is nothing I should like better,' says Palmer, 'but can you be sure that this beauty would look twice at me?'
    ' Indeed, I can,' Mr Weaver answers.' She has fallen deep in love with you already. Annie Brookes is eighteen years old, and highly accomplished.'
    Yet Mr Weaver was fully