Mr Cavell's Diamond Read Online Free PDF Page A

shown her into the drawing room. ‘Caroline you look stunning,’ he said. She must have liked this compliment for she smirked and a knowing look came in her eye. I thought that she was plotting something and I said so to Mrs Smith when I went back to the kitchen.
    She sh ook her head and pursed her lips. ‘That Simpson woman wants to be Mrs Cavell. But he’ll be just playing with her, and she’ll live to regret it, mark my words.’
    When the Master and Miss Simpson left the house Mrs Smith said I was free for the afternoon. First, I went home to see my Ma and Pa. My sister Emmy has a sweetheart and they planned to go to Cissbury Ring. Mother was not happy for she knows well what goes on there after dark so she asked me would I go along-of them. It was a fine day – tis said the sun always dances on Holy Day – and Cissbury festival is fun, so I agreed and we three went off arm in arm, with Emmy in the middle.
    Cissbury was full of people as it most-in-general is at Easter, and they had brought barrels of ale up on mule-back to add to the merriment. How they got those mules through the cuckoo-gates I surely cannot say. Emmy and her sweetheart spied a gypsy woman who were telling fortunes. Her hair was black and unwashed, her eyes green and her hands flashed with many rings. We stood in line and paid our pennies. Emmy came away giggling after her turn, but she wouldn’t say what was told to her. I was scared for my part – I wondered would I like what I heard. But the gypsy woman went quiet and serious when I approached. She watched me carefully as I sat down and then she sighed, like she was not sure how to tell me what she saw in my face.
    I nearly g ot up to leave, then she caught my hand and inspected my palm. ‘Riches,’ she said. ‘Long life, love, and children, many children.’ I smiled at her for this were all good news.
    ‘ But it don’t come yet,’ the gypsy went on. ‘It don’t come to you for dunnamany years, and when it do come, you will turn your back on it. Leastways that’s what I sees here.’ I frowned at her – why would I turn my back on a man who loved me if I loved him too?
    ‘ Look for the jewel,’ she said, fixing me with her eyes, green and bright as a spring morning. ‘Take the jewel when it is offered to you.’
    ‘ What jewel?’ I asked but she waved me away and turned to the next person.
    Emmy asked me what was said but as she didn’t tell me her fortune, so I didn’t tell her mine. We went looking for her sweetheart who had gone to watch the fighters in the ring. Then I spied a crowd around one table, and we went to see what was happening there.
    ‘ Magico!’ said Emmy. ‘I saw him here last year. Don’t loan him your penny or you won’t never see it again – he spirits it away in some clever way.’ We went close up to watch his tricks, and I gasped for in front of the magician and arguing with him was my master.
    ‘ Quickly, we must move away,’ said I for I thought Mr Cavell would not like to know he’d been seen at such a gathering of common folk. I was surprised to see him – I didn’t think it was the kind of entertainment a rich man such as he would like. When I told Emmy she craned her neck for a glimpse.
    ‘ Who is the lady along-of him, holding on to his arm?’ she asked me. I threw a glance over my shoulder and gasped again for it was Miss Simpson, and she was acting all familiar with him. Before I could answer, my sister looked again at them, and then turned to me and said, ‘No, I’m wrong. That’s no lady with him, surely.’ That made me laugh and we scurried away before they saw us.
    We le ft Cissbury not long after. I was so worried about Mr Cavell catching sight of me there that it was no longer fun, and Emmy and her sweetheart decided they preferred to watch the sunset on the beach, so we bought pies to eat as we walked, and set off back to town. I saw Frederick, the boy from the church, sitting on the cuckoo-gate at the bottom of the