The Lives of Christopher Chant Read Free Page A

but your uncle says—Anyway, a good education is important for your career and, to be blunt with you, Christopher, your papa has made a most vexatious hash of the money—which is mine, not his, as you know—and lost practically all of it. Luckily I had your uncle to turn to and—”
    “And once turned to, I don’t let people down,” Uncle Ralph said, with a quick flick of a glance at the Governess. Maybe he meant she should not be hearing this. “Fortunately, there’s plenty left to send you to school, and then your mama is going to recoup a bit by living abroad. She’ll like that—eh, Miranda? And Miss Bell is going to be found another post with glowing references. Everyone’s going to be fine.”
    His smile went to all of them one by one, full of warmth and confidence. Mama laughed and dabbed scent behind her ears. The Last Governess almost smiled, so that the hidden prettiness half emerged again. Christopher tried to grin a strong manly grin at Uncle Ralph, because that seemed to be the only way to express the huge, almost hopeless adoration that was growing in him. Uncle Ralph laughed, a golden brown laugh, and completed the conquest of Christopher by fishing in a tweed pocket and tipping his nephew a bright new sixpence.
    Christopher would have died rather than spend that sixpence. Whenever he changed clothes, he transferred the sixpence to the new pockets. It was another way of expressing his adoration of Uncle Ralph. It was clear that Uncle Ralph had stepped in to save Mama from ruin, and this made him the first good man that Christopher had met. And on top of that, he was the only person outside the Anywheres who had bothered to speak to Christopher in that friendly man-to-man way.
    Christopher tried to treasure the Last Gov-erness too, for Uncle Ralph’s sake, but that was not so easy. She was so very boring. She had a drab, calm way of speaking, and she never raised her voice or showed impatience, even when he was stupid about Mental Arithmetic or Levitation, both of which all the other Governesses had somehow missed out on.
    “If a herring and a half cost three-ha’pence, Christopher,” she explained drearily, “that’s a penny and a half for a fish and a half. How much for a whole fish?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, trying not to yawn.
    “Very well,” the Last Governess said calmly. “We’ll think again tomorrow. Now look in this little mirror and see if you can’t make it rise in the air just an inch.”
    But Christopher could not move the mirror any more than he could understand what a herring cost. The Last Governess put the mirror aside and quietly went on to puzzle him about French. After a few days of this, Christopher tried to make her angry, hoping she would turn more interesting when she shouted. But she just said calmly, “Christopher, you’re getting silly. You may play with your toys now. But remember you only take one out at a time, and you put that back before you get out another. That is our rule.”
    Christopher had become rapidly and dismally accustomed to this rule. It reduced the fun a lot. He had also become used to the Last Governess sitting beside him while he played. The other Governesses had seized the chance to rest, but this one sat in a hard chair efficiently mending his clothes, which reduced the fun even more. Nevertheless, he got the candlestick of chiming bells out of the cupboard, because that was fascinating in its way. It was so arranged that it played different tunes, depending on which bell you touched first. When he had finished with it, the Last Governess paused in her darning to say, “That goes in the middle of the top shelf. Put it back before you take that clockwork dragon.” She waited to listen to the chiming that showed Christopher had done what she said. Then, as she drove the needle into the sock again, she asked in her dullest way, “Who gave you the bells, Christopher?”
    No one had ever asked Christopher about anything he had