Hester Waring's Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page A

fear. She broke her fast with a piece of dry bread and some butter which Mrs Cooke had given her on the pretext that it was going off and shouldn’t be wasted.
    â€˜Surely, Miss Waring, you could find a use for it,’ she said. She knew how important this post was to Hester, and she handed her a tankard of ale, saying, ‘You really ought to have a little something inside to warm you, Miss Waring, before you go.’
    Perhaps the ale was a mistake. True, it had warmed Hester at first, but had also served to increase the strange state of light-headed giddiness which seemed to have overpowered her lately. Hester was not informed enough to know that she was suffering from near starvation and was beginning to display many of its symptoms.
    She could not but own, as she examined herself in her cracked looking-glass, that even her best dress was dismal enough and hardly served to improve an already dragged-down appearance. Nevertheless, she did what she could to try to give the impression of eager liveliness which she thought might impress the Board.
    All except that monstrous ogre, Dilhorne, damn him—nothing which she did would impress him . Hester’s Mentor seemed even more disastrously vulgar and outspoken than ever this morning. It was greatly at odds with her downtrodden and demure appearance. Oh, boo to all geese! she thought as she stepped out into one of Sydney’s few light drizzles with only a shawl to protect her.
    The rain scarcely improved her appearance. Her hair became stuck to her face and attempts to dry it with an inadequate pocket-handkerchief didn’t help much.
    Jardine, the Board’s clerk, raised his eyes to heaven when she came in through the back door, as instructed. He wondered why the girl hadn’t taken a little more trouble over her toilette. Besides she didn’t look strong enough to do anything at all which required exertion. Even caring for small children seemed beyond her.
    â€˜Ah, Miss Waring. Early, I see. Good, good, punctuality is everything,’ he said smoothly, carefully concealing his dismay. A kind man, he wished that he had offered her some advice. He knew that she was poor, but even Jardine did not know of the depths into which Fred Waring’sdaughter had sunk, and how little use his advice would have been since Hester had no means of carrying it out.
    He courteously bowed her into an ante-room panelled in cedar. The Board’s offices were part of a building given over to minor Government departments and the ante-room was sufficiently large and well appointed to allow Hester to wait in comfort. She saw none of the Board’s members. They were obviously using another door. Probably the big one with a huge brass ring in the middle which opened into George Street.
    Despite Jardine’s approving comment, she soon concluded that being early was a mistake, for once Jardine had taken himself away, murmuring kindly, ‘My best wishes for your success go with you, Miss Waring,’ she had far too much time to agonise over what was about to happen.
    She had just reached the point when she thought that her application was so hopeless that she might as well go home and spare herself humiliation, when Jardine put his head around the door and said that the Board was now in session and would see her.
    She found herself in a big room with an oak table facing the door. The Board sat along one side of it. Godfrey Burrell as Chairman was in the middle. There was one empty seat which she quickly realised, on looking around, was the odious Dilhorne’s. He had not come after all! She felt so giddy with joy at this reprieve that she hardly heard Jardine ask her for her name.
    As though they don’t know me already! For she was well aware that all of Sydney knew drunken Fred Waring’s unfortunate daughter.
    She had just managed to stammer it out and Jardine was writing it down, after Godfrey Burrell had solemnly said,‘The clerk will duly