Folly Read Online Free PDF Page B

green. No tits to speak of, nothing for Bates to ogle, Eliza assured herself of that straightaway. Knowing how he liked an ample handful, she softened up considerable. She could do with the help, after all. She could put the new girl on laundry and save herself a parcel of neck pain. Oh, and potatoes, and donkeying, and water-lugging; all the meanest tasks were suddenly half the weight of yesterday.
    So Eliza let herself be fooled in the beginning, she'd admit that. Mary had one of those faces they called heart-shaped in the penny novels, meaning to tell you adorable and prettier-than-the-reader-could-ever-hope-to-be . She tricked you just by tilting her showy-haired head, that she was a sweet girl. Well, Eliza soon learned, didn't she? The girl who plays the angel in the Christmas pageant might be making her only visit to church all year. Otherwise occupied, unless Eliza were mistaken.
    So, this Mary Finn come down, looking like she'd been served porridge when she'd expected roast beef.
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    "Sit yourself down," said Cook. "You can peel apples while you tell us how you've come to be here."
    That was Cook testing Mary's skill with a knife, and she showed herself well enough able. And out pours the story: how she'd helped the baby stop crying, how it was only wind, how Miss Lucilla--who she called Mrs. Overly--had begged her to come to London with a promise of an upstairs situation, how Bates had been so kind, how Lady Allyn took one look at her and--no wonder!--declared her unfit as a nursemaid, how Miss Lucilla blushed and pouted, how Mary felt what she called "drumming terror" that she'd be sent out into what she called "those London streets," how Lady Allyn had relented and allowed that Mary could work in the scullery on trial, and how Mrs. Wiggins was to be judge of what Mary called "any hope for a future" ...
    "And where'll she be sleeping?" asked Eliza, as if Mary weren't sitting there with the face of doom.
    "With you, dear," said Cook, who only used dear once a month when she had a need for something.
    Mary arrived with her dress and her stockings, though they were worn enough they might have been made of cheesecloth. She had on a pair of boots she said used to be her dad's. Later, she traded them with the boy, Nut, from the workhouse, whose feet were near big enough to fit. The shoes he'd got were chapped like old skin but the right size for Mary. That was how they got to be friends--no one else would talk to him, the little beast, but Mary
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    would, having brothers and knowing little boys. According to Mary, they weren't always thinking about toads or farts, but sometimes about their mothers--not that Nut had one of those--or battles or a fistful of sugar from the breakfast bowl. Mary was good at pinching sugar and letting Nut lick her thumb. As if he were a baby, scoffed Eliza. He must be fully nine or ten, just smaller in mind.
    Eliza wasn't too pleased to have Mary sleeping in her bed when she'd had it to herself for the three months since Hazel was so foolish as to get caught in the study filling a flask with gin at Christmas. She'd been a hard one, that Hazel. Eliza wasn't saying Mary was anything like Hazel. Her method was not so plain to see. But one thing was clear: Mary was new to service, and if it hadn't been for Eliza, she'd have been lost. She did learn quick, but every time she watched Eliza first.
    "Have you even read the book, Mary?" asked Eliza, the second night they were tiptoeing around each other before climbing under the blanket.
    "The book?" And she looked scared, so Eliza knew she couldn't read, along with her other useless qualities.
    "Aye, the book. Baylis Handbook, Law of Domestic Servants ."
    "No," said Mary. "No, I've not had the pleasure."
    Ha.
    Next morning, she was stumbling over the order of things when Bates come along and said, "If you're not catching on quick enough, Mary, just give His Lordship a
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    glimpse of your ... attributes ... and you won't get a scolding."
    Eliza was