Lillipilly Hill Read Free

of the house, with shuttered french windows opening on to the veranda. It was a square, solid room, furnished with the handsome, heavy, much-polished pieces that Aunt Agnes had brought with her from her old home in London. Its neat, rather sombre air was in startling contrast to the bright untidiness glimpsed through the western windows.
    Mrs Wilmot drew Rose-Ann and Harriet down beside her on the sofa. She looked cool and immaculate in a lilac-coloured dress with a little high, white collar. Side by side, she and Rose-Ann were pleasingly alike, just as Aidan and his father, facing each other across the massive stone fireplace, appeared to be cut to an identical pattern.
    â€˜I just don’t look as if I belonged to this family,’ reflected Harriet. It was an interesting thought—if she was not a Wilmot, then who was she? A lost princess, perhaps? Or a daughter of the wilds, like Lorna Doone?
    She caught sight of the cake-stand, and for the time being, at least, was content to be a Wilmot. It was a currant cake. Polly had a light hand with most kinds of cake, but currant cakes were really her masterpieces. Harriet took a large slice—one of her mother’s complaints about Polly was that she would never learn elegance in her serving of food. Harriet had no such fault to find.
    â€˜I expect you were very sorry to see Miss Oliver go,’ sighed Mrs Wilmot. ‘She felt so badly about parting from you after all this time.’
    Rose-Ann made noises of agreement, and Harriet started to wriggle.
    â€˜If we get a new governess, Father, what about me?’ asked Aidan. ‘I’m too old for governesses now.’
    Mr Wilmot frowned into his tea-cup.
    â€˜Of course you are. I’m only too well aware of it. You’re part of the whole problem.’
    â€˜What problem?’ demanded Harriet, confident now that she was not to be rebuked for any wrong-doing. Her visits to the cowshed had apparently not been discovered.
    â€˜The problem, Harriet, is one of money—to put it briefly.’
    The children, surprised at being taken thus into adult confidence, gazed at their father inquiringly.
    â€˜You see, I don’t think we can afford a new governess, still less a tutor for Aidan,’ explained Mr Wilmot. ‘I thought it best for you to know all this—you are no longer in the nursery. And what I am about to decide will affect the future of all of you.’
    â€˜No governess and no tutor,’ murmured Aidan. ‘That only leaves school.’
    â€˜For all of us?’ asked Harriet eagerly.
    â€˜I’m afraid school is out of the question too—it would have to be boarding-school, you see. Your mother and I simply did not understand, when we agreed to leave home and take up farming here as Uncle John wished, just how difficult it would be to live in a civilized fashion. The property yields very little income—Uncle John was a far wealthier man than I. If we stayed here, it would be impossible for you children to have the education we want you to have. It would also mean that your mother had to work far too hard to keep the house in order, without suitable help. And you would all be condemned to live cut off from the kind of society to which you have been accustomed. In short, I think that I must sell the property and take you all home.’
    Home—Harriet shut her eyes and tried to remember what the word meant. A tall, blank-faced, sedate old house in a quiet Kensington square. Walksin the Gardens in autumn, just before they sailed—the trees all brown and gold, and the sun dusky pink through the mist. Fires in the schoolroom, and muffins for tea. The jogging and rattling of tradesmen’s vans in the square, and the brisk tip-tap of her father’s feet as he returned from his mysterious work in the City—mysterious because it had never been explained to Harriet, the only one who sometimes wondered where the money came from to buy her clothes