Alley Urchin Read Online Free PDF

natural curls, which even the scraped-back and severe hairstyle could not disguise. Her eyes were large and soft, as blue in colour as the sky, but they were filled with sorrow, always heavy with pain, and something akin to tragedy perhaps, a kind of deep inner suffering almost as though, even when the finely etched wrinkles on the face were lifted in a smile, the eyes remained haunted.
    ‘Are you all right out here on your own?’ questioned Emma, not liking the idea of leaving her seated here alone. ‘Where’s Mr Thomas?’ she added with concern, at the same time coming closer to assure herself that the thin little figure was encased in a blanket, for there wasn’t enough fat on Mrs Thomas’s bones to keep her warm . . . sunshine or not. She needn’t have worried though because, as always, Mr Thomas or Rita Hughes had taken good care of the lady’s needs. There was a rug carefully draped about her legs, and a soft shawl wrapped about her small shoulders.
    ‘Please . . . go to your beds.’ The long, fine fingers waved into the air in a gesture of dismissal. ‘Mr Thomas will be here presently, and I would rather you didn’t fuss.’ Her voice was sharper now, and the words came in short, tired little bursts. Emma sensed that, as always appeared to be the way, she and Nelly were not wanted by Mrs Thomas. That invisible barrier, which she so cleverly created, had been drawn up between them. They were being sent on their way and, not for the first time, Emma suspected that it was because they were convicts. Although Violet Thomas had never made or intimated the slightest complaint of such a nature regarding the two assignees who worked about the house and shop and who resided in the room behind the stables, her strong condemnation of ‘the criminal element thrust among us’ was well known. Emma therefore went out of her way not to antagonise her employer’s wife, and she implored Nelly to do the same.
    Emma would have liked to have been on closer terms with Mrs Thomas, because she knew her to be a lady, and she also felt something of the other woman’s deep desire to go home to England ‘to live out my days under a cloudy sky and to sup afternoon tea in a more genteel atmosphere’. Many times she had been heard pleading her cause to her husband and, as many times, Mr Thomas had been heard to promise, ‘Soon, Violet, soon . . . When we’ve made our fortunes, for I’m sure you don’t wish to starve under a cloudy sky, do you now, eh?’ His wife never gave an answer, nor did she make any response within his hearing. Instead, they seemed to converse less, to drift further apart, and to execute a strange verbal dance whereby each might broach a subject close to their hearts; he of his store and business, she of England and her desire to return. Then the other would nod, smile and make meaningless noises, after which a great painful silence would envelop them, as they each retreated into their own precious dreams. Emma thought it sad that they could not find it in their hearts to share the same dream. However, she sympathised with Mrs Thomas’s obsession to return to England, because Emma herself had been possessed of that same obsession ever since being so cruelly and unjustly taken from her old homeland. Yet she had never once allowed this obsession to become so deeply rooted that it ravaged her entirely, as was the case with Mrs Thomas. Emma had deliberately thrown herself into her work, always striving towards that ultimate freedom which she knew must one day be hers. In so occupying her mind and thoughts, she had deliberately suppressed her heart’s desire, always aware that it was futile to dwell on it too deeply in the early years. Now though, with seven years of her sentence behind her, the realisation of once more being in charge of her own destiny was in sight.
    Day and night, Emma’s thoughts had begun to dwell on her freedom. Her heart would tremble at the prospect and her spirit was charged with