Raisins and Almonds Read Online Free PDF

Dot had tea.
    'I was coming to deliver a parcel for Dorothy, Miss Fisher, and the girls said they'd found a puppy. Poor little thing had a dislocated hip, but I've put it back. Some mongrel kicked her, I expect.'
    'Oh, well, poor little creature,' said Phryne. 'Make sure that she's fed, won't you, Ruth?' Ruth was the sensible one, who had engineered her own escape from bondage and serfdom. Jane, more intellectual and destined perhaps for the medical career she craved, would be thinking about something else. Jane always was. It was part of her slightly distracted charm.
    They did her credit, Phryne thought, looking at Dot refilling Constable Collins' tea cup. Dot was well dressed and solidly respectable, though at her first encounter with Phryne she had been desperate, dishevelled and heavily armed. Ruth, rescued from slavery in a boarding house, was clean and combed and becoming delightfully plump, her devotion to food destining her for a domestic career. Mrs Butler said that she showed promise as a cook, but was 'too bold' with spices and heavy handed with pastry, though she made excellent soup and was an angel with anything involving yeast. Jane, rescued from far darker bondage, was thinner and paler and clever in an offhand vague way which alternately exasperated her adoptive parent and astonished her. As long as someone was around to make sure that Jane got on the right tram with the right change and then got off at the right stop for her examinations, Phryne was convinced that all available academic honours would be hers. The boarding school, which also housed princesses and diplomat's children, had accepted the orphans without surprise; after all, their background might be dubious, but they were the adoptive children of the Hon. Miss Phryne Fisher, well known to be extremely rich and exceptionally well-connected, being the daughter of a Duke. She was also socially adept to the level of
Ipsissimus
and not to be crossed by any organization that wished to remain in the mode.
    Therefore Ruth the slavey and Jane the whore's daughter mingled with the daughters of the upper classes, and quite liked each other, each side considering the other unbearably exotic.
    And although the north wind scoured the unreliable spring outside, inside Miss Fisher's parlour everyone was getting on splendidly.
    The girls had settled down on the hearth rug. Ember the black cat had walked in, sniffed the canine scent, hissed briefly, then analysed it as a small dog with no immediate desire to chase cats. Ember had ascended to Phryne's knee with a precise leap and was now sitting in sphinx pose, nose to the fire, blinking occasionally and looking, as Jane said dotingly, perfectly Egyptian.
    'Nice to see you, Hugh dear, are you off duty or have you left the force?' asked Phryne. The large man grinned. He owed Phryne a lot. Because of her he had entered for his detective's exams with his Sergeant's recommendations and was on the way to becoming Detective Constable Collins.
    'No fear, Miss Fisher, I'm on nights. Just dropped in for a word with Dot and one of Mrs B's ginger biscuits when the girls came in with that poor little mutt. I'm glad you're going to let them keep her, Miss Fisher. Nice little stocky body, I reckon she's a crossbreed, not too big and going to make a good guard dog. Need a guard dog in St Kilda, with all them alleyways behind the houses.' Constable Collins basked under the affectionate regard of everyone in the room except Mr Butler, who instinctively knew who would walk, brush and care for the new acquisition, and Phryne, who was conscious of being manipulated. Then she remembered Hugh's mention of a parcel.
    'Oh, of course, it's your birthday next week, Dot dear, isn't it? We've an appointment with Madame tomorrow, don't forget, for your suit. If you really insist on a suit?'
    Dot nodded. When offered a handmade garment of her choice as Phryne's birthday gift, she admired all the beautiful evening dresses that Madame Fleuri