Feral Park Read Online Free PDF

fanciful imaginings, but after the passage of several interminable minutes of the same, including the addition of “gipsy hot cross bun shop” and “gipsy dental appliances purveyor” to her lengthy list, Anna became quite bored with the whole topic, and gaped conspicuously, inadvertently sprinkling Gemma’s exposed right arm with droplets of yawn mizzle. Now thinking again of gipsy merchants and their sundry services brought a smile of amusement to Anna’s restive countenance and eased her in the transit. “Gipsy Inns of Court! Tee hee hee. Gemma is a clever one!”
    Several Romany children watched with dirty faces and ragged smiles as first Anna and then her protector passed, some of the young ones emulating Anna’s gait, others mocking the distance deliberately placed between the two by putting equal space between themselves. Anna could not keep herself from looking at them, dresst as they were in the colourful, yet frayed and threadbare rags that passed amongst gipsies for clothing. Her heart was full for the children even as they insulted her with their disrespectful raillery. Anna thought to herself, “Do I walk thusly? Do I swing my arms in such a wide fashion? If so, I should look quite silly indeed! And James—does he march forward as would a wooden soldier? I should think not! I shall steal a glance to confirm my opinion. Now he kneels to lace his shoe! What a ridiculous pretense. I wish that he would not do it. Oh, goodness! The ragamuffins are pretending to lace their own shoes. And yet they have no shoes! They are wriggling their fingers above their dirty bare feet with no purpose but to ridicule my servant and myself. Oh, look at their dirty little feet! I will quicken my pace and be done with this most insalubrious portion of my journey.”
    And then one final thought about the gipsy children: “I should like to take them all home and give them each a good scrubbing!”
    Otherwise, the day was beautiful, the sky a shade of vivid blue that brought to mind cornflowers and bonnet ribbons for young girls possessed of bright, sparkling eyes of the very same cerulean hue.
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    Mrs. Guinevere Taptoe had been married to Roderick Peppercorn, younger brother of Henry Peppercorn, for all of seven months prior to his succumbing to putrid fever. Subsequently, Mrs. Taptoe married Mr. Byron Taptoe to whom she bore three children of which two lived to adulthood: a daughter, Guinevere, later to take the name Mallard in marriage; and a son, Maurice. A year after Mr. Taptoe’s death, also from putrid fever, Maurice departed and was not seen or heard from thereafter. Widow Taptoe sold her home for debts and delinquent taxes and in her diminished capacity was forced first to set up house in a tiny cottage in Berryknell, which once had belonged to a cooper (and seemed as it shook and shuddered in the wind to be constructed chiefly of barrel staves), and then to take up lodgings with her son-in-law Luther Mallard, daughter Guinevere, and their two surviving daughters (the firstborn, also named Guinevere, dying in toddlerhood of putrid fever). Anna for a time called her uncle’s widow Aunt Guinevere, until it was pointed out to her by Mrs. Mallard that her mother, having succeeded to a second marriage after the death of Anna’s uncle, was no longer Anna’s aunt, and that she should stop calling her thus. By the same token, Mrs. Taptoe’s daughter Mrs. Mallard was not Anna’s cousin, nor even a friend, but merely the wife of the owner of a draper’s and ironmonger’s shop in Berryknell Square, as well as the purveyor herself of ladies’ furnishings within, and if Anna did not wish to purchase something made of linen or iron she should stop loitering there and go elsewhere.
    Until disabused of the error by her father, Anna had thought that Mrs. Taptoe lived still above the shop in the company of her daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. It was here in the tiny Mallard parlour that Anna had upon occasion