Tabitha in Moonlight Read Free

Podger under one arm, she heard her soft Dorset voice. ‘Miss Tabby, where have you been? It’s all hours—and what’s that you’ve got with you?’
    Tabitha shut the street door firmly behind them and opened the door into the flat, then crossed the minute hall and went into the kitchen, where she put Podger on a chair. She said contritely: ‘Meg dear, I’m so sorry. I’ll tell you what happened, but I must feed this poor creature.’ She rummaged around and found some cold ham and gave it to the cat, explaining as she did so. When she had finished, Meg clucked her tongue just as she had always done when Tabitha had been a very little girl and she had been her nanny.
    â€˜Well, what’s done can’t be undone,’ she remarked comfortably, ‘poor old man. Did you get your supper?’
    â€˜No,’ confessed Tabitha, ‘not all of it,’ and was prevailed upon to sit down immediately at the table and given soup while Meg made sandwiches. With her mouth full, she said: ‘You spoil me, Meg. You shouldn’t, you know. You could get a marvelous job with an earl or a lord or someone instead of being cooped up here with me on a wage Father would have been ashamed to offer you.’
    Her erstwhile nurse gave her a severe look. ‘And what would I be doing with earls and lords and suchlike? Didn’t I promise your dear mother that I’d look after you, and you didn’t think that I would stay behind when you left home, now did you, miss?’
    Tabitha offered Podger a morsel of cheese and jumped up to hugMeg. ‘I’d be lost without you,’ she declared soberly, and then: ‘I don’t want to go to Chidlake on Friday.’
    â€˜You must, Miss Tabitha. It’s your stepsister’s birthday party, and though I know there’s no love lost between you, nor yet that stepmother of yours, you’ve got to go. When you left Chidlake after your father married again you did promise him you’d go back, Christmas and birthdays and suchlike.’
    â€˜Oh, Meg, I know, but Father was alive then. Stepmother and Lilith don’t really want me there.’
    â€˜Maybe not, but it’s your home, Miss Tabby dear, whatever they say—you belong there and they never will. You can’t leave the old house to strangers.’
    Tabitha went over to the sink with her plate. She loved her home very much; Meg was right, she couldn’t leave it completely. She said heavily: ‘Of course I’ll go, Meg. Now we’d better go to bed. I’ll take Podger with me, shall I, in case he’s lonely. And don’t get up early, Meg. I’m on at eight and I’ll have plenty of time to get something to eat before I go.’ But Meg was already laying the table for breakfast; Tabitha knew that whatever she said, the older woman would be down before her in the morning, fiercely insisting that she ate the meal she had cooked. She yawned, suddenly tired, ‘Today’s been beastly,’ she observed.
    Meg gave her a shrewd look. ‘Tomorrow’s always a better day,’ she stated firmly. ‘Go and have your bath and I’ll bring you up some hot milk—there’s nothing like it for a good night’s sleep.’
    But hot milk or not, Tabitha found sleep elusive, perhaps because she had been talking about her home, and doing that had awakened old memories. She had had a happy childhood, accepting her happiness with the blissful, unconscious content of the very young. She had had loving parents, a beautiful home and no cares to spoil her days. She had been happy at school too, and because Chidlake had been in the family for a very long time, she had known everyone in the village as well as a great many people in nearby Lyme Regis. She had been fifteen when her mother died and almost twenty when her father married again, and by then she was a student nurse, living in hospital in the cathedral city some