Free Toblethorpe Manor by Carola Dunn

dressing.”
    With much solicitude, Mary settled her in a chair by the fire with a pile of books and went out.
    Not ten minutes later there was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Bedford appeared. As jealous of the Carstairs’ pride as they could possibly be, she had resented Miss Fell from the first, and was most suspicious of her right to be treated as a member of the family. Ready and willing to take affront and consider herself put upon by a nobody, she advanced on her victim, glaring like a turkey cock.
    “What’s this I hear about Mary learning to be an abigail?” she demanded. “The lower servants are in my charge, and I’ll thank you not to meddle miss.”
    “Lady Annabel instructed Mary to wait upon me,” said Miss Fell coldly, hiding her dismay. “If you have work for her when I do not need her, of course she will do it. I am sure you must be very busy with half the staff gone.”
    “Well, it’s not so much trouble looking after just you and Miss Carstairs, miss, but I’m sure I don’t know what to do about meals. That Gladys says she don’t know how to go on without the Frenchie to hold her hand. I’m at my wits end, and I can’t be running off after the maids all the time.” Mrs. Bedford ran the gamut from condescension through complaint to belligerence in one short speech.
    “Indeed, you cannot,” said Miss Fell soothingly. “I shall speak to Gladys. I do not think Miss Carstairs should be bothered. And Mary shall come straight to you whenever I am finished with her, so you see you need not chase her. Surely you’d not deny her a chance to better herself?” she added cajolingly.
    “She’s a good girl,” pronounced the housekeeper grudgingly. “If you’re sure she won’t be a bother, Miss Fell? She’s my own sister’s child; I’d like to see her rise above housemaid.”
    “So you are a Yorkshirewoman also, Mrs. Bedford? I would not have guessed it from the way you speak.”
    “Ah, Mrs. Geoffrey taught me, Mr. Richard’s grandmother, that is. She was a proper lady, Miss Fell. She was a Lucy, too, Miss Lucy Arnden. That’s where young Mr. Geoffrey’s property came into the family.”
    “You have been with the Carstairs a long time, then.”
    “Oh yes, Miss Fell, and many’s the tale I could tell--Oh, there’s a rhyme, something lucky’s on the way.”
    “Tell me a tale, Mrs. Bedford,” coaxed Miss Fell. “I find I am not well enough to read much.”
    Some time later, Mrs. Bedford descended to the kitchen to announce to all and sundry that Miss Fell was a proper lady, and she’d have something to say to anyone as said she wasn’t.
    “And she wants to see you right away, Gladys,” she added ominously.
    Gladys scurried out, and after a brief interview returned full of confidence to prepare luncheon. The transformation set the seal on the approval of the servants’ hall, except for one aged gardener who prophesied disaster in a gloomy voice.
     “Oh, get on wi’ yer,” snorted Gladys in disgust. “How an owd curmudgeon like you can grow food as won’t curdle the stomach is beyond me!”
    Miss Fell, meanwhile, was far more exhausted than if she had spent the morning reading. She lay back on her bed, sadly crushing the grey merino, and closed her eyes. Her head was aching slightly and she hoped fervently that she would not have to deal with any more servants’ squabbles for a while. When Mary brought her lunch tray she was fast asleep.
    “Poor soul,” she reported back to the kitchen, “she’m pale as t’moon an’ I’ll thank ‘ee, auntie, not to go upsettin’ my young lady no more.”
    “Watch thy tongue, young woman,” said Mrs. Bedford indignantly. “Don’t tha come the high and mighty wi’ me. Poor soul!”
    When Miss Fell woke her headache was gone, and she rang the bell. She ate luncheon and gave Mary a language lesson. The girl was very quick except in the use of “you” for “thee.”
    “It don’t—doesn’t—seem right, somehow. ‘You’ is a