Eliza’s Daughter by Joan Aiken Read Free Book Online Page B

tumbled nest.
    â€˜Come quick, Triz, here’s your lady mother waiting for you, all in silk-satin, and two grand white horses ready to pull ye home!’
    I lifted and carried her down the stairs. Poor little thing, she was still half-asleep, and, I daresay, mazed from all her adventures of the previous day; she burst out a-crying and buried her head in my shoulder, clinging to me frenziedly as Jeff Diswoody tried to take her.
    â€˜Alize! Alize!’ she cried.
    â€˜Now, now, what’s all this to-do, don’t want to go to your own mam?’
    Of course she didn’t.
    â€˜Poor little one,’ said Lady Hariot seeing at once how matters lay. ‘No wonder that she does not like to leave her friends. But I have a solution: why do not you – what is your name, my child?’
    â€˜Liza, so please you, ma’am.’
    â€˜You, Liza, come up with Thérèse now to the Hall – then it will not seem so strange to her. For I can see she is very attached to you. And then, after she is settled in, one of the grooms shall drive you back.’
    â€˜Law bless you, my lady, I can walk back from the Hall easy as fall off a brick,’ I said, enchanted at this solution to my problem, and I hopped up into the chaise, still clasping Triz in my arms. ‘I am sorry, ma’am, that you should see her all of a muss, like this, but – but Biddy and Hannah were both late back from the fair last night –’
    â€˜It does not signify, not in the least,’ said Lady Hariot absently. ‘I have clothes waiting for her.’ With one eye she was thirstily, eagerly studying her daughter, while the other one strayed to the cottage where Hannah, who must have made one of the speediest toilets of her existence, was curtseying, bobbing and beaming, now arrayed in a clean cap, tucker and apron.
    â€˜Oh, ma’am! Oh, my lady! Oh, ’tis such a joy to see ye well and back home and bobbish again!’
    â€˜Thank you, Mrs Wellcome. And thank you for taking care of my daughter. I am not standing on ceremony, as you say. Good-day!’ she called, as Jeff cracked his whip and the ponies broke into a trot. Hannah’s face was a study as we bowled away down the village street. I rather dreaded to think what my reception would be when I got home, but to have Triz safely settled, and this chance of seeing the Hall, would amply compensate, I felt, for whatever trouble lay ahead.
    Over details of what befell after our arrival at the Hall, memory begins to fail me; I can recall that Squire Vexford was there, gruff and crusty: ‘I have brought our daughter home, Godric, as you see,’ says Lady Hariot. ‘Is she not exactly like the portrait of your aunt Tabitha at the head of the stair?’ And he: ‘Humph! It would be a deal better if she resembled my uncle Thomas.’ At which Lady Hariot sighed and bade me follow her to the nurseries, a set of rooms which looked down to the bay and had been equipped with every plaything that the heart of a child could desire. A smiling nurse-girl waited with a bundle of clothes on her arm.
    â€˜There!’ said Lady Hariot, lovingly studying Triz who stared all about her in silent wonder. ‘There, my lambie, now you are at home and all this will be yours, all your own!’
    And she showed her daughter a toy – I forget what it was, a wooden horse, perhaps. Never having possessed such an article, Triz was puzzled as to what to do with it, and I felt it not my part to show her, so Lady Hariot went down on her knees and demonstrated its use. Triz watched in silence, her eyes very wide and solemn.
    â€˜I will leave you now, my lady,’ I said. ‘For sure, Triz will soon be happy in these fine rooms.’
    But again, when I made to go, Triz wept and wept and clung to me and would not be comforted.
    â€˜Massy me, dearie!’ cried the nursery maid. ‘Why you be in your own room now, with all your things about