Free Saddle the Wind by Jess Foley

again. The woman spoke again.
    ‘Please, sir – come in.’
    Urging the child to stand aside, she stood back from the door and John Savill thanked her and stepped into the little hall. Then she opened a door to a room on the left and gestured in. ‘Please, sir – do go in and sit down.’As Savill entered the room she turned to the child and said softly:
    ‘Go into the kitchen and try to keep Blanche amused for a few minutes, Agnes, will you? There’s a good girl. Mr Savill wants to talk to me.’
    The child protested at once, shaking her head: ‘Oh, must I?’ and quickly the woman lifted a finger to her lips. ‘Not so loud,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll disturb your brother. He was awake all night and he needs his sleep.’
    As the child turned and moved into the kitchen the woman followed, and John Savill heard her say, ‘Now make sure you keep an eye on her. And don’t let her get up to any mischief.’
    He knew a sense of reluctance as he stood there, feeling that he was intruding on the woman’s privacy. He looked around him. He had passed by the Coates Lane cottages countless times but he had rarely been inside any of them. Now, standing in the Farrars’ little front room he realized how very small the buildings were. And in the tiny, cramped interior the Farrars were raising a family of five children. His eyes wandered about the small room, taking in its cleanness, its neatness, the pictures around the walls. He noticed to his surprise that there was a piano. In the silence the solemn ticking of the old grandfather clock sounded unusually loud. He saw that the time was almost half-past two. The woman’s husband, Oliver Farrar, would be working in the gardens up at the house. He wondered briefly what life was like living with Farrar. He saw him from time to time going about his duties, and according to the head gardener he was a good worker, conscientious and efficient. Savill recalled how he had given him a rise in wages a while back, but that had been less for the man’s efficiency than for the inconvenience he had suffered in having his wife up at the house for so long.Before that, soon after Mrs Farrar had gone to stay up at the house, Savill had made a point of seeking Farrar out, going into the garden where he was working and making known his appreciation of what he and his wife were doing. Farrar had politely replied that they were glad to do what they could. In the brief conversation that followed Savill had found the man to be intelligent and articulate, and his voice surprisingly pleasant. When Savill had left him some ten minutes later, however, it was with the feeling that he didn’t know him much better than he had before. The one thought that had stuck in Savill’s mind was that in spite of the man’s efficiency at his job he nevertheless seemed somehow a stranger to it, as if in a way some part of his mind was on other things.
    The woman came back into the room, closed the door behind her and, a little shyly, asked him to sit. Thanking her, he took a seat on an old sofa, holding his hat between his hands. She looked nervous and a little worried, he thought, as she sat in the chair opposite. Then, before he could speak she said quickly:
    ‘You wanted to see me, sir. It’s – is it about Oliver, sir?’
    ‘About your husband?’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, no, not at all.’
    He suddenly realized that he had never really looked at her before. He had only ever seen what she stood for in his mind – a strong, intelligent woman, the woman who had so willingly come out in the snow that night to try to help his wife – and to be his daughter’s saviour. And somehow, because of her strength of will at that terrible time, because of the spirit she had shown and all that she had done since then he had always seemed to see her as a tall woman. And he could see now that he was wrong. She was quite small. It was partly hercarriage that gave the impression of height, he realized; the way she held