Feral Park Read Online Free PDF Page B

visited the older gentlewoman whom she once considered her aunt. Tea was often served during these visits, although duck pâté sandwiches were also offered from time to time, the idea of eating duck in the Mallard drawing-room never ceasing to amuse the readily-amused Mrs. Taptoe or her lady’s maid, who was later to accompany her mistress to the newly-let tenant cottage in Turnington Lodge. The servant’s name was Umbrous Elizabeth, the “umbrous” given for the intriguingly dusky tone of her complexion. Elizabeth had been with Mrs. Taptoe all of her life, her mother, a full Negro, having been in service since shortly after her escape from a slave ship and her passage to England under the auspices of kindly Quakers, with the daughter taking over as a maid-of-all-work when the mother passed away from putrid fever.
    Anna, for all her love of a good, long walk, was, upon this morning, coming to regret how far she was required to go to visit someone who once resided so near to her own home in Feral Park as to be gained in a short stroll of less than a quarter hour. But the regret was tempered by an eagerness to see Mrs. Taptoe and to learn a few things about the woman’s situation that were not forthcoming from her tight-lipped father.
    The cottage in which Mrs. Taptoe had several weeks earlier settled herself, though remarkably small, was warm and inviting, and Mrs. Taptoe, being informed of Anna’s approach by Umbrous Elizabeth, stood to greet her guest upon the front step with a welcoming smile and beseeching arms. Once enfolded, Anna was hugged for a very long time, pushed snuggly against the pillow of Mrs. Taptoe’s plump and expansive bosom. “It has been ages! Oh, let me look at you! Is that your man James over there? Send him to the stable round back. My man Tripp has snuff and a pack of cards for piquet.”
    Mrs. Taptoe led Anna through the passage and into the small front parlour of her very tiny cottage, dipping her head to avoid striking it upon a lowbutting beam in the very low ceiling.“I live in a leprechaun’s house, as you see!” the old woman remarked. “Is it not wee? With tiny pictures on its tiny walls, it is wee and twee, all of a piece, is it not?”
    “Yet quite lovely,” said Anna, wedging herself into a small chair (for all the furniture in the room was reduced in size—no doubt, thought Anna, to accommodate the tight circumstances).
    “Tea, Elizabeth, if you please. In the small teacups. We have not room upon this miniature tea table for the larger ones.”
    With a curtsey: “Yes, ma’am.”
    “I must tell you the truth of the house, Anna. It was formerly let to dwarves.”
    “Dwarves? My goodness!” exclaimed Anna, not believing her friend in the least, and then with an open smile: “It pleases me so much to see you so happy and so well, Mrs. Taptoe.”
    “Anna, you may return to calling me Auntie if you wish, for I have all but disowned that lot which lives above the shop in the loud village. They are an unloving and ungrateful bunch, if I may speak freely. Every last one of them down to the younger of those two girls has treated me not as the grandmamma at all, but as a stranger—a veritable stranger in their midst! I was never so happy as when I learnt that this cottage was available to let, and that the dwarves, who previously occupied it, had moved on in search of a much smaller house that did not so terribly expend them in the upkeep.”
    “So there really were dwarves living in this house before you?”
    “Oh, dear me, yes. About this tall. No. More about here.” Mrs. Taptoe placed her hand out to her side to shew the measure. “Oh, Anna, my dear, you are looking more beautiful than ever. Are you in love? Now you hold your answer. I will return and retrieve it later! For the present, tell me every thing there is for me to know about Feral Park and your good father, who was once my dear brother-in-law, and all that I may have missed in my removal to this