Polly's Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

made me think a bit.
    ‘I am not sure that I do,’ I said at last. My parents were happy enough together, but it was a hard life for my mother, having four children to bring up on very little money - even before my father died. And what if the man I married took to drink, or turned out to have a bad temper? Besides, if I took a husband I would have to leave service, and I was certainly not ready for that just yet.
    ‘I am never getting married,’ Harriet said decisively. ‘I shall keep house for my brother Rory, and own a pack of beagles and hunt all day long. Will you come and be my housekeeper, Polly?’
    ‘Certainly,’ I said - so that was decided.
    The very next day, however, something took place which was to change my prospects at the Hall completely. Nothing to do with Jemima, either: I brought about this disaster all by myself. Perhaps it was because I was feeling happier, and that made me feel more confident than I should have done. I can think of no other reason why I should have been so stupid.
    This is how it happened. Mary checked her cleaning box before tea the next afternoon and realized that she must have left a duster in Lady Vye’s sitting room upstairs. Luckily the family were occupied with their own tea in the main drawing room, but Mary was in a quandary because Mrs Henderson wanted to see her right away and she had no time to retrieve the duster. I offered to fetch it for her, trying to be helpful, so Mary told me to hurry straight there and back, and no messing about along the way. Off I went, and sure enough - there was the duster on Lady Vye’s writing table. I picked it up, and then couldn’t resist a closer look at the table, with its pretty design of flowers all inlaid in different woods.
    Oh, why hadn’t I listened to Mary? It would have saved me a great deal of trouble. But it is easy to be wise after the event, and my eye had been caught by an exquisite porcelain figurine standing in one corner. The day before, I had heard Mary grumbling to Becky about Lady Vye and these figurines of hers. She had four of them, a present from his Lordship; they each represented a season, and she liked to keep a different one on her table each week to look at while she wrote her letters. Mary was always forgetting to change them around; she had plenty of other things on her mind. Which season was this? I wondered, picking up the china figure. (What was I thinking of?) It was a young country girl in a sprigged muslin frock, carrying a thick sheaf of corn. Autumn, most probably, rather than Summer. Of course, I should never have touched the thing! I was not even allowed to dust the top of the writing table; polishing its legs was the furthest I could go. Handling anything so precious as this ornament was strictly forbidden.
    Suddenly the door burst open with a crash, and in rushed Miss Harriet. I was so startled by the noise, and already so guilty besides, that the figurine flew out of my hand. It fell on the floor and cracked into three or four pieces, the dainty head with its fair curls rolling away from me across the carpet.
    I stared at Harriet, frozen with horror. She looked down at the broken china and then back at me. There was nothing to be said. We could hear Lady Vye’s voice calling from somewhere close by as she followed her stepdaughter up the stairs. I was in the most terrible trouble, and we both knew it.

Four
    Never begin to talk to the ladies or gentlemen, unless it be to deliver a message or ask a necessary question, and then do it in as few words as possible. Do not talk to your fellow servants or to the children of the family in the passages or sitting rooms, or in the presence of ladies and gentlemen, unless necessary, and then speak to them very quietly.
    From Rules for the Manners of Servants in Good Families, 1901
     
    Still not saying a word, Harriet put a finger to her lips as some sort of signal to me and then darted forward to gather up the pieces of porcelain. By the time