Poor Little Rich Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

her father, and during the day the young son of one of his employees had been responsible for her welfare. She had been ten at the time of her mother’s death, and Sanjay only twelve, but he had spent his whole life in the jungles and forests of India and knew as much as any grown man of the perils and pleasures of such a life. Hester soon had implicit faith in his ability to take care of her. If he ran along a fallen tree, his bare, brown feet gripping the creeper-clad trunk, she would follow him, confident that it was safe to do so, but when he guided her round a thicket, telling her that some animal lurked within, she was careful to mimic his every move and to wait, still as a statue, until he gave the command to move on.
    It was always hot in the jungle and most Europeans suffered from various forms of prickly heat, sores and sweat rashes, but Hester, wearing as little as possible, and following Sanjay into the coolest and shadiest spots when the sun was at its height, suffered scarcely at all.
    This wonderful, free life had continued until she was fourteen, when Sanjay took up an official postas a sort of forest ranger and was no longer available to be her playmate and guardian. By this time, Hester’s father had decided that her education had been ignored for long enough and had sent her to a first-rate boarding school in Paris, where the Sisters of Mercy had made her very happy during her time with them. It seemed that Hester had inherited her father’s quick brain for she speedily caught up with and then overtook her contemporaries. When she was sixteen, she returned to her father’s side once more, helping him with his work and typing out reports with two fingers on the battered old Remington machine he had always used. She had thought that this life would continue until her father’s retirement, but once more tragedy struck. They had been camping in a tiny village and Hester had taken herself off, with a bearer to carry for her, to a bazaar in the nearby town. Upon her return, she found the camp in turmoil; it appeared that her father had been sitting beneath a large tree, dealing with a queue of natives, when a snake had dropped from the branches, close by the bare feet of a small child who had been playing in the dust. Trevor Elliott had snatched the child out of harm’s way in one swift pounce but had not been quick enough to evade the cobra’s strike. Someone had killed the snake, a king cobra at least six feet long, and though they had hurried the sahib to the nearest hospital, they had been too late. By the time Hester had arrived there, Trevor Elliott was already dead.
    So when Mr Hetherington-Smith had first suggested that Hester should take on responsibility for his motherless child, she had almost fainted with relief. Her father had died only a matter of weeks before and she had been living with the family of his friend and colleague, Alfred Browning. MaryBrowning was the mother of five children, ranging in age from ten years to six months, and though she was perfectly pleasant to the young woman who had been foisted upon her, it was clear that she had no idea what she was to do with the uninvited guest. Members of the Civil Service in India had all the servants they needed, so there was little that Hester could do to help her hostess. Mr Hetherington-Smith’s offer of work had, Hester felt, come in the nick of time and she accepted it gratefully.
    What was more, it reminded her of the advice her mother had given her so many years ago. Kia had urged her daughter, almost with her last breath, to go back to England when she was grown up, if the chance ever arose. ‘You should marry one of your own kind. I know you are fond of Sanjay – he is an admirable person, your father values him highly – but believe me, my darling, such a marriage as that would not do. You would be no more acceptable to Sanjay’s people than he would be to yours. And great unhappiness would undoubtedly result. So please,