Free Orphan Bride by Sara Seale

likes to decide everything for me—I can’t explain. But I couldn’t bear it.”
    “All right,” he said doubtfully, “I suppose you know best, but it sounds all wrong to me.”
    “Later,” said Jennet, feeling she had been unreasonable, “I’ll tell him about you. I’ll bring the children to Pennycross and he will see how nice you are.”
    He smiled a little crossly. “Don’t worry,” he retorted, “I don’t want to meet your disagreeable Cousin Julian. He sounds a stinker.”
    Jennet’s birthday fell towards the end of February and the children insisted that she should stay for tea that day.
    She set off after lunch with a mounting pleasure which she knew to be out of all proportion to the moment.
    They were watching for her at the windows and came tearing out, shouting their greetings. They told her excitedly to shut her eyes and led her carefully into the house and into the sitting room which w as only used on special occasions.
    “Open your eyes! Open your eyes!” they screamed. Jennet opened them and gazed at the feast which was spread out. There were jellies and tuffs and little cakes and buns of all shapes and sizes, and the children had decorated the table with fern and heather and early wild daffodils. There were further shrieks, and Frankie came in from the kitchen, carrying a real birthday cake with icing and seventeen pink candles blazing merrily in the draught.
    Jennet’s eyes filled with tears at the expenditure of so much thought and trouble and she stammered incoherently: “You shouldn’t, Mrs. Thompson—you must have shopped and cooked for days. I’ve never known such kindness.”
    “Rubbish, child!” Mrs. Thompson retorted. “A birthday is a birthday in this family and it’s little enough return for all you did for us when I was sick.”
    “Give her the present, give her the present!” chanted the children, and Frankie put a small parcel on Jennet’s plate.
    “It’s nothing really,” he said off-handedly.
    With loving fingers she undid the string and layers of paper, watched breathlessly by the children, and lifted up Frankie’s gift. It was a little ch ina fawn with long spindly legs and startled eyes.
    “Oh,” she said softly, “it’s lovely—it’s a darling.”
    “We thought it was rather like you,” Frankie told her shyly; then she kissed them all in turn, even Frankie, who turned quite red, and was mocked at by his sisters.
    It was a merry tea-party. Mrs. Thompson saying little but watching their young faces with contentment thought how different Jennet looked when she was flushed, and wondered, not for the first time, why a solitary old maid should have adopted her.
    “They’ll be giving you a party at home tonight I suppose,” she suggested carelessly.
    Jennet shook her head. “They don’t even know,” she said.
    “They don’t know ?” Frankie sounded incredulous. “They don’t know it’s your birthday? What kind of people are they?”
    “Well, you see,” Jennet explained, “I just didn’t think of telling them, I suppose.”
    He shook his head at her.
    “You are a queer girl.”
    “Haven’t you had any presents, or anything !” Betty’s eyes were round and shocked.
    Jennet looked surprised.
    “No, of course not.”
    “How awf u l .”
    “Now, children.” Mrs. Thompson quelled her daughters with a firm glance. “Jennet must cut her cake, but first she must blow the candles out.”
    “You must make a wish, Jennet,” Betty told her, “and blow them out all with one breath or it won’t come true.”
    Jennet stood up and stooped over the cake. In the flickering circle of light her face had an almost passionate intensity. There was only one wish for her. “ Oh, please let me keep my friends. Please let nothing happen to spoil things ... ”
    The children watched with unblinking absorption. It was a solemn moment. Jennet took a deep breath and blew. An “Oh” of dismay went up from the children as sixteen little spirals o f smoke