Barbara Metzger Read Online Free PDF

and they mustn’t blame Uncle Charles for his failings but should pray for him instead.
    Cristabel closed the fastenings on the suitcase. Her decision felt so right, but she couldn’t help whispering, “Papa, pray for me.”

Chapter Three
    The decision still felt right. Miss Swann felt awful. Odysseus may have had a worse journey, but she doubted it. To start with, she found at the posting inn that she could ride on the mail coach, but her harp could not. That is, it could be wrapped in oilskin and tied to the back or tossed on the top of the carriage to face the rain, fog, and cold of foul, early spring weather, the road dirt, and the ill-handling of reluctant postboys. Instead, she was compelled to hire a post chaise and driver, and postillions at the stages. The cost of this was so high that Cristabel was forced to economize in her food, lodgings, and tips, which only earned her worse food, lodgings, and treatment. Innkeepers and their employees did not look kindly on single women traveling alone, especially long Megs who were too thin, wore faded, funereal clothes, and had a heavy instrument that needed carting in and out of carriages to boot, lest it be affected by the dampness of the night despite its covering. Miss Swann was too proper to make sport of and too poor to respect, so she was given neglect and insolence. There were tiny rooms with clammy, unaired sheets and no fires, barely warm meals of whatever was left over, broken-down, mismatched horses so the ride was longer yet and bumpy—and sullen unfriendliness. She even found herself missing the girls at Miss Meadow’s school!
    The first night Cristabel was still buoyed by the sheer glory of her great adventure. She, Cristabel Swann, had had the courage to defy Miss Meadow and was actually on her way to a better future. She didn’t even mind having to sleep as best she could in a hard chair in the inn’s common room, all of the bedrooms being taken. She was too excited to sleep anyway and, too, it was cheaper. There was a great deal to see, with carriages and travelers coming and going, so it wasn’t until much later that she remembered the knotted handkerchief one of the girls in her room had pressed into her hand as she was leaving. Inside, Cristabel found three half-melted bonbons, two copper pennies, a pink silk rose with frayed petals, a stub of a pencil, and a much-folded watercolor of the academy, possibly. Warmed by the children’s thoughtfulness despite the dying fire in the drafty room, Cristabel poked the rose through the limp brim of her ugly black straw bonnet and used the pencil to calculate her finances on the back of the painting.
    On the second night, the bonbons tasted like manna, and Miss Swann wished there were three more at least, or just one of Miss Meadow’s almond tarts. The results on the back of the painting were as depressing as those on the front, and Cristabel was beginning to feel headachy and stuffy-nosed. It was also the first night in nearly eight years that she had had a room all to herself, except for the wildlife she was sure inhabited the inn’s beds. She was independent and free—and all alone in the world.
    After that things got worse: the weather, and so the roads, her cold—thank heavens for the gift handkerchief—and her finances.
    By the time Miss Swann finally reached London, so many days later she lost count, she was as damp and bedraggled as the rose drooping onto her forehead. Her nose was all red and her eyes were streaming. Her throat was so scratchy it hurt just to breathe the London air. Besides, one wasn’t supposed to be able to see the air, was one? She was in no condition to face the solicitor that afternoon, if he hadn’t already left his offices, and she doubted she had enough money left for a respectable London hotel, if she could find one that would accept her. She knew better than to put up at a coaching house, for what was barely respectable for a single lady on the road was actually