Free Orphan Bride by Sara Seale Page A

rose from the candles, leaving one still burning brightly alone.
    “You won’t get your wish,” pronounced Betty with sorrow. “Oh, Jennet!”
    Jennet still stood, looking down at the solitary candle, and her eyes were suddenly scared.
    “Won’t I?” she whispered. “Won’t I, really?”
    Frankie leant forward and blew out the little flame. “What tommy rot!” he exclai m ed. “Girl’s nonsense. Here, Jennet, cut the cake. We’re all famished.”
    He took her home before it was quite dark and she stood for a moment where they always parted, the china fawn clasped to her breast.
    “It has been the most wonderful birthday I’ve ever had,” she told him s o ftly. “Thank you, dear Frankie.”
    He touched her face with awkward fingers.
    “You aren’t like any girl I’ve ever known,” he said, “you want so little.”
    “I’ve never had very much,” she said simply, and turned back to Pennycross.
    When Julian came for the week end her birthday wag discovered and everyone was most distressed that it had passed unnoticed. Julian insisted on a bottle of champagne in which to drink her health, and when he returned to London sent her an expensively bound edition of Pater. She wrote him a polite little note thanking him for his present, but she would never like it a s well as Frankie’s fawn.
    They met one Saturday early in March at Pennytor for a picnic with the children. Emily, who now took these excursions for granted, saw her off with the injunction not to be late for tea as Julian would be arriving then.
    It was a mild hazy day, and after they had eaten their lunch they felt too lazy to go exploring with the children but lay in the shelter of the boulders, talking. Frankie had the same gentleness for her that he had for his sisters, and ashy protectiveness which made him constantly thoughtful for her. Jennet found him very endearing.
    “ You have the strangest eyes,” he told her suddenly. “You stare at me sometimes as if you didn’t see me.”
    “I was always being told in the orphanage not to stare,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude.”
    “Silly! It’s not a rude stare. That’s different. Does this Cousin Julian of yours ever say nice things to you—the sort of things men say to girls, I mean?”
    “Cousin Julian?” She looked surprised. “No, don’t think so. He’s usually criticizing. He thinks I am very young and untutored.”
    “You are very young—like the little colts on the moor, or a fawn.”
    “But you make it sound like a compliment,” she told him shyly. “I don’t think Cousin Julian has ever paid me a compliment.”
    He frowned and pulled at a tuft of heath. “Crossed in love and soured for life I should think,” he said crossly.
    “Yes, he was—crossed in love, I mean,” she said, “but she didn’t sound a very nice girl, I must say. She threw him over when he got his leg smashed.”
    He rolled over on to his back.
    “ Oh, well, don’t let’s talk about him. Sing to me .”
    She sang, and he lay propped on one elbow watching her. When she had finished he put an arm round her shoulders, and she rested her head against his breast with a small sigh of contentment.
    She sang very softly:
    “ I’d rather rest on a true love’s breast,
    Than any other where ... ”
    He bent over and kissed her gently.
    She made her way back across the moor, caught in a spell of enchantment. As she neared the house she began to run for the sheer joy of the wind in her hair and the turf beneath her feet. She ran and never saw Julian coming to meet her until she was almost in his arms, then she stopped dead and the light went out of her face.
    “Hello!” she said flatly.
    “Hello!” he replied, and stood looking down at her with a thoughtful expression.
    He had been watching her long before she was aware of him, even before she had started to run, and for the moment he thought she had keen him and was running to meet him. He seemed to see her with fresh eyes, and he