Ambergate Read Free Page A

glanced at it, then crushed it into his cape pocket as he trampled and kicked his way to the door.
    Tears ran down the Lawman’s face. It had only taken the young officer a moment to ruin the work of centuries.
    That’s Caleb Grouted
, thought Chance.
A quick worker
. He almost admired him.
3
    Miss Jennet doesn’t love me.
    To her, I am the little illiterate orphan girl from the Capital, someone to be saved by education. So she does what she considers
     her duty by me, as former schoolmistress to the village. For the past three years she has taught me to read and write and
     talk in proper grammar, and I’m truly grateful for it. She’s an excellent teacher. It’s strange that though she’s so impatient
     in other things—desires the house clean and tidy and well run, and often raps our knuckles if it is not—in her teaching she
     has infinite patience. She doesn’t teach Doggett: Doggett says she’ll stick with what she knows already; she’s fearful of
     the blasphemy in book-learning.
    I am a little frightened of Miss Jennet, but I long for her praise. Most of all I long for her love, but that is all for Aggie,
     her niece.
    All the same, by the evening of that spring day Miss Jennet was pleased to see the pots shining on the kitchen walls. “You’ve
     done well, Scuff,” she said.
    I smiled, and a little glow lit in my heart. A dog lying before the fire wagged his tail at the sound of her voice. They’ve
     grown fat and soft with Aggie’s spoiling, the guard dogs ofMurkmere that were once so fierce and ready to eat any stranger.
    “I think that your job is done for today, Scuff,” Miss Jennet said. “You can rest now.”
    Rest! With vegetables to be picked from the kitchen garden before daylight faded, and water to be brought in from the pump
     in the stable yard and heated, and supper to be cooked. Pease pottage tonight, and all that shelling!
    Aunt Jennet was smiling, though: it was a little joke. She knew as well as I that there was no rest for anyone.
    But then her smiled faded. She said, “I think I will take a little rest also,” and sat down at the table. Her face sagged
     into little folds about her chin, so that she looked old. Miss Jennet is as thin as a whip and as brown as tanned hide, but
     I don’t believe she is an elderly woman. She always refuses to do any less work than we do.
    I brought her a cup of water. Her brown face was white. She raised the cup to her lips, then her hand drifted down, the cup
     tilting, the water spilling; and she was suddenly crumpled on the flags at my feet.
    I didn’t know what to do. I knelt down. I was trembling, for I remembered a dead woman in a cellar long ago. In the end I’d
     had to go up into the street by myself, and that was when they’d caught me and put me in the Orphans’ Home.
    But Miss Jennet opened her eyes, and I was safe in Murkmere again. “I’ve not eaten much today,” she murmured. “There hasn’t
     been time. I was sorting… carrying… Don’t tell Aggie.”
    “You must get to your bed,” I said in a fluster. “I’ll help you.”
    To my surprise, she did not protest. She leaned on me, surprisingly heavy, and I helped her from the kitchen, upstairs to
     her chamber, past all the closed doors of those rooms we no longer used. It was beginning to grow dark, and a wind was rising
     outside; I lit a candle and closed the window.
    “It’s chilly in here,” she said, shivering, as she climbed on her bed.
    “I’ll light a fire,” I said.
    “No, it’s too much bother. Bring me an extra coverlet from the linen cupboard. That will warm me.”
    The cupboard was vast, lined with shelves that were piled high with sheets, quilts, old pillows, and scented with crumbling
     sprays of dried lavender tied with wisps of silk. The linen was Doggett’s responsibility: she did the washing, ironing, and
     darning. Her stitches were exquisite: she’d been lady’s maid to Miss Leah until Miss Leah had disappeared three years ago.
     She