The Flood-Tide Read Free

trifle.
    ‘Which mare is it?' she asked.
    ‘Her that come in from Wetherby this mornin',' the boy said, and grew more confident. ‘Mester 'Umby were right put-about, and sent her straight to the isolation box. She's proper poorly lookin'. Mester 'Umby says—'
    ‘Yes, very well, I'll come,' Jemima said. There were six visiting mares at Twelvetrees, sent to be covered by the Morland stallion, Artembares, besides valuable stock of their own, and an infectious disease could wreak havoc there. ‘Go up to the house, boy, and tell them to saddle my horse, and then go straight back and tell Master Humby I'm on my way.' The boy scuttled off, and Jemima got to her feet. ‘I must go up and change. One failing of calico is that one cannot ride in it. Flora, will you take my place here?'
    ‘Oh Mother, Mother,' Charlotte cried in an agony, having been alerted by the word 'mare' to a conversation about horses, her ruling passion. 'Please can William and I come? You said he must not work any more this afternoon, and a ride will be the very thing for him, to cure his headache.'
    ‘And have you the headache too, Charlotte?' Father Ramsay asked, amused. Jemima looked at him, wondering why he should even consider trying to separate the twins.
    ‘I think the harvest is well enough advanced to be able to spare the little ones, don't you, Father?' she said. 'We shall finish all today in any case.'
    ‘Without a doubt,' he said obligingly. 'They have worked well this morning.'
    ‘Run up to the house, then, and change. And be quick - I will not wait for you.’
    *
    The stables at Morland Place were almost empty now, sad contrast to their heyday when Jemima was young. Her own mare, a handsome Morland chestnut named Poppy, three rough ponies on which the children had been taught to ride, and two stout cobs for common use, were all that were kept in. When Allen comes home, she often said to herself, things will be different. She tried not to think about it too much, for she missed her husband so much that if she dwelt on his absence she would unfit herself for all her numerous tasks.
    Charlotte was strangely silent as she and William, on Mouse and Dove, followed Poppy out of the yard. She sat well on the pony, making it walk out in a way that no one else could manage. She must have a proper horse soon, Jemima thought, and remembered her own excitement when her father had given her her first horse, the beautiful black gelding Jewel, long since gone to the Elysian fields.
    ‘Mother,' Charlotte said at last, in a voice unusually subdued. 'Mother, why do you want to be rid of me?'
    ‘Rid of you? Whatever can you mean by that?' Jemima checked Poppy, who was eager to gallop, to let the ponies come alongside her.
    ‘Well, when Alison was brushing my hair just now she said to Rachel that you'd have a hard job to get rid of me when the time came.' Her voice was small, and she looked up at her mother with something like fright. 'Are you going to send me away? Me and not William?' Jemima's heart melted.
    ‘Oh, my dear, it's only servants' talk. It doesn't mean anything.'
    ‘But she meant something,' Charlotte persisted with perfect truth.
    ‘She meant that I should have a hard job to find you a husband, because you are not like Mary,' Jemima said, deciding honesty was the best response.
    ‘But I don't want a husband. And I don't want to be like Mary. You don't want me to be like Mary, do you?'
    ‘I want you to lead a happy and useful life, my love. You must be married one day, and I'm afraid husbands like their wives to be like Mary - at least, to have some of her qualities.'
    ‘But why must I be married? I don't want a husband. I've got William. Do I have to get married, even if I don't want to?'
    ‘I would not force you to marry someone you disliked. To be married to a man you disliked would not make you useful or respectable,' Jemima said feelingly, remembering her own first marriage to her Cousin Rupert, Earl of Chelmsford, who before he