Michael Cox by The Glass of Time (mobi) Read Free Book Online Page B

though she never shouts at you, like old Mrs Horrocks did. It seems worse somehow that she don’t shout, if you know what I mean, miss. I can’t quite explain it, and p’raps I feel it more than others, though everyone – even Mr Pocock – is ruled by her, below stairs, I mean. I’ve heard Mr Pocock say it’s all a matter of character, though I’m not quite sure what he means.’
‘I still wish you to call me “Miss Alice”, in private,’ I said, ‘whether the Great Battersby likes it or not. Will you do that?’
Sukie agreed, if somewhat reluctantly.
‘That’s settled, then,’ I replied. ‘I’m delighted to have made your acquaintance, Sukie Prout, upper house-maid, and hope very much that we’ll be good friends hereafter.’
‘Friends! Her Ladyship’s maid wants to be friends with queer Sukie Prout!’
She gave a delighted little squeal and put her hand to her mouth.
‘Is that what they call you, Sukie?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I pay it no heed,’ she said, with quiet defiance, ‘for I know I am indeed a poor queer thing. If I was bigger and cleverer, I dare say they’d call me something else, and so what’s the use in complaining?’
‘You’re not at all queer to me, Sukie,’ I said. ‘Indeed, you already seem to be the nicest and most sensible person I’ve met here.’
A little blush began to colour her chubby cheeks.
‘Can you tell me one thing I’m curious about, Sukie?’ I asked, as she was picking up her bucket. ‘Why was Miss Plumptre dismissed?’
Setting the bucket down again, Sukie looked up and down the staircase, and lowered her voice to a whisper.
‘Well, miss, that was a great scandal. They said she’d taken a valuable brooch that her Ladyship had left on her dressing-table one day when she’d gone up to London. She denied it, of course, but Barrington swore he’d seen her leaving her Ladyship’s apartments at just the time the brooch disappeared, and when they searched her room, there it was. The curious thing was that she went on denying she’d took it, which no one could understand, seeing that the thing had been found in her room, and this vexed her Ladyship something terrible. And so she was sent on her way, without references. Mind you, she’d never been able to please her Ladyship. But it were a good thing in the end, for now you’re here, miss, to take her place.’
The sound of a door shutting on the floor below suddenly caused Sukie to look down in consternation.
‘I must go, miss – Miss Alice, I mean – before Mrs Battersby catches me.’
Whereupon my new friend curtseyed, wished me good morning, and picked up her mop and bucket, before continuing on her way.
    II
The Servants’ Hall

    I MADE MY way to the head of the circular stone stairs that Mr Perseus Duport had said led down from the Picture Gallery to the Library.
On reaching the stairs, I hesitated.
I was eager to see for myself the famous Duport Library, which my tutor had told me was celebrated throughout Europe; but was it proper to accept Mr Perseus’s flattering invitation? What would Lady Tansor say? Perhaps I could just take a peep, to see whether Mr Perseus was there, and then decide what to do. So down the stairs I tripped.
At the bottom, I found myself in a narrow hallway, with a curious ceiling decorated all over with intricate patterns of sea-shells. To my right was a glazed door opening on to the terrace that I could see from my room; at the other end of the hallway was a smaller, white-painted door, which I now proceeded to open, as unobtrusively as I could.
The sight that greeted me made me gasp.
Before me stretched an immense rectangular room of dazzling white and gold. Facing me, giving a view of the terrace and the gardens beyond, eight soaring windows, with semi-circular architraves, rose up to meet the exquisitely plastered ceiling, flooding the great room with early-morning light. Between each window, and running the whole length of the opposite wall also, were tall wire-fronted