Flint and Roses Read Online Free PDF

interests of the community. Now then, ladies, if we could turn our attention to this little matter of a concert hall—’.
    And having reminded them—humble manager’s wife that she was—of her grand connections, the intricate financial web which bound most of them to her brother, the extreme eligibility of her sister’s daughters, which was a matter of some importance to those with marriageable sons—she would without once mentioning her husband’s name, pass on to other things.
    We had not of course expected to be pampered in Aunt Hannah’s house, for although her husbands salary was known to be ample—my Uncle Joel being generous to those who gave him value for money—her charitable and social activities, her insistence on living, at least on the surface as a Barforth rather than an Agbrigg, proved an evident financial strain. The future mayoress of Cullingford could not refuse to contribute substantially to the charitable foundations she had herself brought into being could not, in fact, give less than the women she had bullied into giving anything at all. She could not refuse invitations to dine from ladies of substance whose husbands she intended to cajole into supporting Mr. Agbrigg’s candidature, and, having accepted, she was obliged to invite them in return. When she did, her table must have its share of crystal and silver, and no one must be allowed to suspect that she had herself prepared the sauces and deserts which were far beyond the skills of the ageing kitchenmaid she called her cook. But in the more private areas of her home she could keep a watchful eye on coals and candles, could employ her own half-trained charity children as maids, reserving just one presentable parlourmaid for the serving of drawings-room tea. ‘Ah—what have we here, I wonder?’ she would ask at the appearance of her tea-tray, her smile half-amused, half-sarcastic as she served, with immense composure, the gingerbread and chocolate cake, the apple-curd tarts and cheese muffins she had baked herself only a few hours before.
    Yet from the start of our visit, although Celia and I were obliged as usual to do our own mending and keep our own rooms in order, thus freeing her servants for the downstairs dusting and polishing that would ‘show’, she extended such leniency to Prudence that Celia, who was easily offended, soon began to complain.
    â€˜She wants you to marry Jonas,’ she said, her face sharpening as it always did when there was a marriage in the offing. ‘Well, that’s what comes of being father’s favourite and getting all the porcelain. But I suppose it’s only right you should get married first, you being the eldest—and they say Jonas is very clever.’
    And when Prudence, seriously annoyed, declared that marriage was not greatly on her mind, Celia, who feared nothing in the world so much as being left on the shelf, calmly replied. ‘That’s nonsense. Prudence. Of course you’re thinking about marriage. It’s the one thing every body thinks about—and you should be quick about it, so faith and I can have our chances.’
    I had been acquainted with Jonas Agbrigg all my life, or for as much of it as I could remember, yet all I really knew about him was the much-vaunted fact of his academic brilliance. He had, it seemed, shown from the very first a flair for learning far in advance of his years and his relatively humble station. At the grammar school, long before Aunt Hannah’s marriage to his father had given him a degree of social standing, he had easily out distanced the sons of the local ‘millocracy’ on whose generosity the school depended and had been something of an embarrassment even to certain schoolmasters who had found themselves hard-pressed to keep up with him. He had shown himself, indeed, to be so universally gifted that Aunt Hannah, whose pride in him was boundless, had been unable to