Free Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis by Miss Read Page A

returning from the noonday blaze to the shade of the kitchen. 'Emily will be here before I'm ready for her. But then that's one of the pleasures of growing old,' she comforted herself.
    Singing softly, roses in hand, she mounted the stairs to the waiting room.

Part Two:
Beech Green

CHAPTER 7
    L IFE at Beech Green was an exhilarating affair, after the confines of Caxley, and made all the richer by the friendship with Emily Davis.

    She was a mischievous, high-spirited child, the middle one of seven children. All nine of the Davises lived, as snug and gay as a nestful of wrens, in a tiny cottage at the end of a row of four.
    Dolly found her way there before she had lived a week at her new home. There was a happy-go-lucky atmosphere about the Davises' house which enchanted the little girl who had been more primly brought up. She tumbled in and out of their home, revelling in the games, the nonsense and the carefree coming and going of the seven children and their numerous friends.
    Emily's father was a gardener at the manor house at Beech Green. He was a giant of a man, with a face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. Two bright blue eyes blazed from his weatherbeaten countenance, and his laugh shook the cottage.
    'My husband's a very larky man,' Mrs Davis would say proudly. 'Likes his joke, and that.'
    She was barely five feet high, with a figure so neat and child-like that it seemed impossible that she could be the mother of such a large and boisterous brood. Her energy was boundless. She scrubbed and polished the little house, cooked massive meals, washed mountains of linen, and then knitted and sewed, or tended her flower garden, as a relaxation. Throughout it all she laughed and sang, finding time to play with her children, cuffing them good-naturedly when they needed correction, and seeming, at the end of the day, to be as fresh as when she rose at five-thirty.

    Dolly loved Mrs Davis dearly. Her warm and casual friendliness made her feel part of the family, and her self-assurance grew.
    In the corner of the cottage living-room sat old Mr Davis, Emily's grandfather. He had been a carter, but now, unable to work regularly, he made a few pence by mending pots and pans for the neighbours. His right hand was encased in a black kid glove, which fascinated young Dolly.
    One day, soon after her arrival at Beech Green, the old man caught the child's eyes fixed upon his hand. A soldering iron was heating in the open fire, and between his knees old Mr Davis held an upturned kettle.
    'You be wondering why I keeps me glove on, I'll wager,' he grunted.
    Dolly smiled shyly.
    'Well, I ain't agoing to take it off to show you, me little maid, or you'd 'ave a fright. I ain't got much of me fingers left, if the truth be told.'
    He bent forward, breathless with the effort, and removed the red-hot iron from the fire. Dolly, with a thrill of horror, saw how he held it gripped in the palm of his hand. He dipped the iron in a little tin on the fender, and a hot pungent smoke rose from the sizzling liquid.
    'I was out in that of snowstorm for two days,' said the old man. 'Afore you was born or thought of, that was. In 1881—getting on for fourteen year ago. I'd taken a load of hay over to Springbourne that day, and it was snowing pretty lively as I went. But how the Hanover I got back as fur as I did that afternoon, I never could tell. Just this side of the downs I 'ad to give in. I cut the horses loose and said: "Git on 'ome, you two, while you can." I felt fair lonely watching them slipping and sliding down the hill, up to their bellies in snow, leaving me on me own.'

    'You should have sat on one,' said Dolly gravely.
    'Easier said than done,' grunted Mr Davis, applying his soldering iron to the kettle. There was silence while he surveyed his handiwork for a minute or two, and then he resumed.
    'The snow was that thick, and swirling around so, them two horses vanished pretty quick. I could 'ear 'em snorting with fright and shaking their