Prudence Read Online Free PDF Page A

hand upon each child’s shoulder.
    ‘As you have no doubt guessed, Miss Hursley, these are your charges.’
    Two pairs of appraising brown eyes regarded Prue.
    She blinked. ‘You are twins.’
    The Misses Chillingham looked scorn upon her.
    ‘’Course we are!’
    ‘Didn’t you know?’
    ‘Silence!’
    This last from Mr Rookham made Prue bite back the automatic apology that hovered on her lips. After all, how should she have known, if she had not been told? She looked the twins over with growing interest. They stared back at her with a disconcerting lack of self-consciousness in features of angelic innocence.
    They were possessed of neat little noses, pert red lips, and dark brown orbs in complexions faintly olive in colour. They were dressed the same, in long-sleeved blue schoolgirl frocks, covered over with aprons, and they looked to be eight or nine years of age.
    Prue smiled at them. ‘I am so pleased to meet you. How do you do?’
    Mr Rookham pushed the one on his right so that she stepped forward a pace. ‘This is Charlotte—I think.’
    ‘Uncle Julius, you have it wrong again!’ piped up the girl, her tone disparaging.
    ‘I’m Charlotte,’ said the other, disengaging herselffrom his restraining hand. ‘In any event, you shouldn’t introduce me as Charlotte. No one calls me that.’
    ‘She’s Lotty,’ said the first, also squirming out of her uncle’s hold. ‘And I’m Dodo.’
    ‘Dorothy,’ explained Mr Rookham. ‘And I wish you well of them! If you can find a satisfactory way to tell the difference, pray inform me of it. I am sure the girls will be delighted to show you around, Miss Hursley. Now, for heaven’s sake, take them away!’
    Feeling a trifle overwhelmed, Prue yet stood her ground. ‘Yes, but the kitten, sir. Pray let me coax it out.’
    Instant shrieks smote at her ears.
    ‘The kitten!’
    ‘Let’s get it!’
    Mr Rookham seized the girls, much to Prue’s relief.
    ‘No, you don’t. You’ll only frighten the thing. Let Miss Hursley do it.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Prue anxiously. She moved to the twins. ‘I have only had it with me for a short time, you see, and it is very nervous. Then, if you will help me, I think we must find the poor little thing something to eat. It must be starving by now.’
    Two vociferous high-pitched voices reassured her, suggesting an immediate raid upon the kitchen, to which Mr Rookham not unnaturally took exception.
    ‘You may ask Mrs Polmont to speak to Wincle.’
    ‘But Uncle Julius—’
    ‘ We want to speak to Wincle.’
    Leaving them to argue it out, Prue quietly slipped away to the bookcase and knelt down. Sure enough, there was the kitten, cowering away in a far corner.
    It took several moments of gentle persuasion, but at last the kitten consented to venture close enough forPrue to be able to recapture it. Only then did she realise that silence pervaded the room, and she rose to find herself alone with Mr Rookham.
    ‘I ejected them,’ he explained, gesturing towards the door. ‘I doubt if they will be patient for long, so perhaps it will be as well if we postpone any further discussion.’
    ‘Discussion?’
    Prue’s heart dropped a little. What was to be discussed? She eyed him with no small degree of trepidation.
    That flicker at his lips came again. ‘Don’t look at me as if you suspected I meant to throw you out after all! I had intended to have gone over the circumstances which have led to my hiring you to deal with those dreadful nieces of mine, that is all. But we can reserve all that. Go and see to that wretched animal of yours, and we will talk later.’
     
    Ignoring their uncle’s prohibition, the twins had dragged Prue back to the hall and crashed through the green baize door at the back. Her attention on the frightened kitten, Prue had been powerless to prevent this invasion of the domestic quarters. She had entered a feeble protest.
    ‘Did not your uncle say—’
    Her new charges had cut her off without apology,