Free Wait For the Dawn by Jess Foley Page B

wouldn’t know what to feed it on. They don’t eat just any old thing, you know. They have special foods at different times in their rearing. The parents know what to bring’ em, but you don’t and I don’t. No, you can’t save this little creature. It’ll die whatever you try to do for it.’
    ‘Oh, but – can’t we do anything at all? I hate to see it just lying there. Trembling like that.’
    He said without hesitation, ‘Best thing to do would be to put it out of its misery. Put an end to its suffering.’
    ‘We should – kill it?’ she said.
    ‘It’d be the best thing, the kindest thing.’
    She shook her head, giving a little shudder. ‘I couldn’t do it. Oh, I couldn’t do it.’
    ‘I’ll do it, don’t worry.’
    She stood there then, while he stepped away, bending over the ground, and watched as he selected a large stone.He came back to her side and stood over the stricken bird.
    ‘You don’t have to look,’ he said.
    ‘No.’ She had already turned her face away.
    She closed her eyes tightly and then heard a slight thud as the stone struck.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she heard him say. ‘It’s done.’
    Still she could not open her eyes.
    ‘It’s all right,’ he said again. ‘It’s dead.’
    May gave way to June, and the summer months came blazing in. During the days Lydia saw little of her father, for at Cremson’s he was down on the factory floor while she was in the office with her two male colleagues, surrounded by ledgers, receipts and bills and other paperwork. In the evenings, however, it was a different matter. Unless she was visiting Evie, or he was out in connection with his preaching, they were thrown together.
    Lydia washed and cooked for the two of them, but as they sat over the meals she prepared she could barely think of words to keep a conversation going. They had never had a lot to say to one another, and now, with the loss of her mother, Lydia became more and more aware of her restlessness and the need in her to change her scene.
    It could not last, and as she sat with Evie in her little kitchen one Sunday afternoon she confided that she had taken steps to change her situation.
    ‘I’ve written off to Seager’s,’ Lydia said. ‘I posted the letter yesterday afternoon.’
    ‘Well,’ Evie said, ‘you threatened to, and that was before you lost your mam.’
    In their conversation the two young women were keeping their voices low, for Hennie lay curled up on the sofa, sleeping under the cover of a small rug. Evie sat beside her.
    ‘Yes, well, now I’m even more determined to go,’ Lydiasaid. ‘I need to get away, and now that Mother’s gone there’s no reason for me to stay on.’
    ‘But why d’you have to move out of the village? Surely you could find something close by.’
    ‘I have to move away. I just don’t want to stay here.’
    ‘Have you told your dad?’
    ‘No, not yet.’
    ‘When will you tell him?’
    ‘I don’t know, but he has to know soon.’
    A letter came from Seager’s a week later, arriving on a Friday, and was waiting for Lydia when she got in from work that evening. Her father, who was working late at the factory, knew nothing of it.
    Lydia sat in the kitchen and read it through. A brief letter, it thanked her for her application and invited her for an interview.
    At once she got pen and ink and paper, and sat down to write back that she would be pleased to be there at the appointed time. After that she wrote a letter to her sister:
    The Whitehouse
13th June 1890
    My dear Ryllis,
    Thank you for yours of the 9th. I’m glad to know you’re continuing well. This is just a quick note – no time to write more – to tell you that I am to be in Redbury on the morning of Saturday, 21st of June. I have secured an appointment at Seager’s the department store at twelve o’clock. I know that you sometimes visit Redbury on a Saturday on errands for Mrs Lucas, so I’m wondering if you might be coming into town on that day and, if so,