Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles Book I Read Free Page B

fifteen, and injuring herself so as to be in some measure affected by it for the rest of her life. What was to be done with so thoughtless a girl? What said of one who could commit an act so against the interests and desires of her unsuspecting parents? Mrs. Northcott was not unnaturally disgusted, but years of self-command enabled her to conceal her feelings from everybody except her husband and daughter, the surgeon, the handful of houseguests wishing they had taken their departure the day before, and the half a score of servants who moved quietly about, looking deaf, and anticipating the sudden increase of their popularity below stairs.
    By now, my reader may well be forgiven for thinking that I have wandered rather far from the declared subject of this history. I assure you I have not. As unsatisfactory as Ann was in general, she had managed, entirely by accident, to attach herself to the Parrys at a very young age. Mrs. Northcott had never been able to fathom quite how it had come about, or why they should have permitted, even invited, the encroachment; but that they did so was beyond dispute. Even when most exasperated with her daughter’s heedless ways, she could not wholly forget this circumstance, and Ann soon discovered, that the most trifling allusion to Merriweather, was enough to check the full spate of her mother’s disapproval, and direct her thoughts in happier channels.
    At first the Parrys were concerned that Ann should not give offense by neglecting family for friends, but Mrs. Northcott, when she heard of it, hastened to dispel such a groundless fear. Ann herself was always careful to arouse no suggestion of ill-feeling between the houses; she went frequently to call on her parents; she paid them every respect and attention which they could be thought to deserve; more, in fact, than they desired. Mr. Northcott, if he thought of it at all, doubtless thought only how pleasant it was that Ann should be so easily disposed of; it was left for his wife to appreciate in full the benefits of this unexpected intimacy between her luckless daughter and a family of such note. As the years passed it became a matter of lament that Meravon’s heir (and his son) were no-one-knew-where on the continent, and that the younger sons of the house were equally inaccessible--one at school or University, and the other always away fighting various groups of discontented natives in the name of the King. But still it did Ann no harm to be seen everywhere in the thick of the Parrys. A less sensible parent might have been supposed to grieve over the inevitable contrast between Miss Northcott and Miss Parry, but Mrs. Northcott took comfort in the knowledge, that any girl must have displayed ill beside Julia, as even a wax candle must be overlooked in broad sunlight. Ann, being no more than tallow, made the waste minimal.
    So the friendship was promoted on every side, and Mrs. Northcott had her reward in the year one, when the Earl’s eldest son, William, was so obliging as to expire in France, insuring the return of the heir in a young and marriageable state, in the person of a grandson. Viscount Merivale, arriving at Merriweather to find Ann firmly entrenched in his family, accepted her presence as a matter of course, and affection as her due. This was very gratifying indeed. Mrs. Northcott began to hope that Heaven had at last come to realize its hideous mistake in apportioning out years of adversity to such a one as herself, and in this hope she promptly descended on Ann with prints, and opinions, and a horde of pin-lipped dressmakers and milliners, which vexed that young lady very much, by keeping her home with fittings, when she longed to be at Merriweather.
    Alas, for Mrs. Northcott! The hordes had scarcely retreated--leaving behind colorful heaps of taffeta and muslin, but somehow having failed to transform her daughter into the heir-snaring belle she had ordered--when Lord Merivale took it into his head to purchase a