Friday's Child Read Online Free PDF

with the game-bag when he went out for a little hedgerow shooting. He had bullied her, and tyrannized over her, lost his temper with her, boxed her ears, and forced her to engage in various sports and pastimes which terrified her; but he had permitted her to trot at his heels, and he had allowed no one else to tease or ill-treat her. Her situation was not a happy one. She was an orphan, taken out of charity when only eight years old to live in her cousin’s house, and to be brought up with her three daughters, Cassandra, Eudora, and Sophronia. She had shared their lessons, and had worn their outgrown dresses, and had run their numerous errands—such services being, her Cousin Jane informed her, a very small return for all the generosity shown her. The Viscount, who disliked Cassandra, Eudora, and Sophronia only one degree less than he disliked their Mama, gave it as his considered opinion, when he was fifteen years old, that they were brutes, and treated their poor little cousin like a dog. He had therefore no difficulty now, as he looked at Miss Wantage, in interpreting correctly her somewhat sweeping statement. “Those cats been bullying you?” he said.
    Miss Wantage blew her nose. “I’m going to be a governess, Sherry,” she informed him dolefully.
    “Going to be a what?" demanded his lordship.
    “A governess. Cousin Jane says so.”
    “Never heard such nonsense in my life!” said the Viscount, slightly irritated. “You aren’t old enough!”
    “Cousin Jane says I am. I shall be seventeen in a fortnight’s time, you know.”
    “Well, you don’t look it,” said Sherry, disposing of the matter. “You always were a silly little chit, Hero. Shouldn’t believe everything people say. Ten to one she didn’t mean it.”
    “Oh yes!” said Miss Wantage sadly. “You see, I always knew I should have to be one day, because that’s why I learned to play that horrid pianoforte, and to paint in water-colours, so that I could be a governess when I was grown-up. Only I don’t want to be, Sherry! Not yet! Not before I have enjoyed myself just for a little while!”
    The Viscount cast off the rug which covered his shapely legs. “Jason, get down and walk the horses!” he ordered, and sprang down from the curricle and advanced to the low wall. “Is that mossy?” he asked suspiciously. “I’m damned if I’ll spoil these breeches for you or anyone else, Hero!”
    “No, no, truly it’s not!” Miss Wantage assured him. “You can sit on my cloak, Sherry, can’t you?”
    “Well, I can’t stay for long,” the Viscount warned her. He hoisted himself up beside her and put a brotherly arm round her shoulders. “Now, don’t go on crying, brat: it makes you look devilish ugly!” he said. “Besides, I don’t like it. Why has that old cat suddenly taken it into her head to send you off? I suppose you’ve been doing something that you shouldn’t.”
    “No, it isn’t that, though I did break one of the best teacups,” said Hero, leaning gratefully against him. “It’s partly because Edwin kissed me, I think.”
    “You’re bamming me!” said his lordship incredulously. “Your wretched little cousin Edwin hasn’t got enough bottom to kiss a chambermaid!”
    “Well, I don’t know about that, Sherry, but he did kiss me, and it was the horridest thing imaginable. And Cousin Jane found out about it, and she said it was my fault, and I was a designing hussy, and that she had nourished a snake in her bosom. But I am not a snake, Sherry!”
    “Never mind about that!” said Sherry. “I can’t get over Edwin! If it don’t beat all! He must have been foxed, and that’s all there is to it.”
    “No, indeed he wasn’t,” said Hero earnestly.
    “Then it just shows how you can be mistaken in a man. All the same, Hero, you shouldn’t let a miserable, snivelling fellow like that kiss you. It’s not the thing at all.”
    “But how could I prevent him, Sherry, when he caught me, and squeezed me so tightly