Alley Urchin Read Online Free PDF Page B

such great anticipation and excitement that there were times when she could hardly contain herself. At these times, and often in the dark small hours when she was unable to sleep, she would get up from her bed to pace back and forth across the room like a caged creature. After a while, when the desperate emotions retreated and other, more tender, emotions flooded her heart, she would go to the window and gaze out across the moonlit sky. Then tears would flow unheeded down her face. Thoughts of home would storm her senses, pulling her first this way, then that, until she could hardly bear it. ‘Oh, dear God,’ she would murmur, ‘will it ever come right for me again?’ She longed for Marlow’s arms about her, but even if in three years’ time by some fortune or miracle there was the money and freedom to return to England, how would she find him? And, if she did find him, would he still love her? After all, she had deliberately spurned him in favour of another man even though, unbeknown to Marlow, it was for his own protection. Then there was the fact that she was a convict, charged and marked with a terrible crime. Oh, and what of the child she had borne him, and which was lost to them both? How could any man forgive her? The torture never ended for Emma. But she prayed that it would one day, otherwise there was no reason to go on.
    ‘Emma!’ The voice cut sharply across Emma’s turbulent thoughts. ‘Mrs Thomas has a mind to sit out a while longer. You and Nelly get off to bed.’ Mr Thomas had returned from inside and he was quickly aware that his wife was becoming agitated by the presence of the two young women. ‘Off you go,’ he urged as Emma bade his wife a good night. ‘Go on . . . go on. I’ll see to her when she’s ready to go back upstairs.’
    ‘Miserable old bugger, that Mrs Thomas,’ remarked Nelly, pulling off her clothes and getting quickly into her own narrow wooden bed. ‘Anybody’d think we’d got the bleedin’ plague . . . the way she starts panicking every time we get within arm’s length of her!’ She was greatly peeved and Emma’s reply that ‘we must make allowances for her’ made no difference to Nelly’s mood. ‘Well, I ain’t mekkin’ no allowances for the old sod,’ she retorted, blowing out the candle which was on the cupboard by her bed. ‘It were her sort as pushed me into crime when I were a kid. Look down on yer, they do. Won’t give yer no work, in case yer cut their throats at the first opportunity!’ Then her mood quickly changed, she told Emma to ‘sleep tight . . . mind the bed-bugs don’t bite’, and was soon fast asleep, the gentle rhythm of her soft snoring seeming a comfortable and homely sound to Emma as she lay in her own bed.
    There was no sleep in Emma just yet, only a strange sense of quiet. Sometimes, she wished she could be more like Nelly, because nothing worried her for very long. She had no driving ambitions, no real grudges to bear, and no one person in her heart who could tear it apart. Here Emma checked herself. How did she know whether Nelly secretly loved anybody in particular? What about the way she enjoyed Foster Thomas’s attentions today, and what of the remark she made about him being ‘a handsome devil’? The very possibility that Nelly might be quietly attracted to that man filled Emma with dread. Indeed, it was too horrible to contemplate, for Emma truly believed that such a man as Foster Thomas would take the greatest delight in destroying someone as devoted and vulnerable as Nelly. Emma prayed that, if Nelly really did feel a certain attraction towards him, she would never let it be known to him, or he would likely take her to the depths and leave her there.
    With this disturbing thought in mind and with the intention of warning Nelly the very next morning, Emma leaned over in her bed to blow out her candle. She closed her eyes and forced her mind to more pleasant dreams. Of a sudden Emma realised how tiredness had crept up