The Black Opal Read Online Free PDF Page A

mentioned their names?”
    “Oh yes,” I cried.
    “One did. The one who gave me the toddy and bandaged it. She is Rosie Perrin.”
    “I shall remember that,” he said, nodded and went out.
    Nanny muttered, “Writing to gipsies, my foot! What next? Mistress will know better than that. A nice thing you’ve done. Falling about in woods and bringing that sort into the house!”
    Sally wanted to hear all about my adventure, and I think Estella wished it had happened to her. Sally said it was very nice of the gipsies to look after me.
    The doctor came every day to look at the wound on my leg and to test my ankle. He was always kind and gentle to me and cool to Nanny. I liked him more for both of these reasons. Mrs. Marline did not come to see me. I wondered whether she wrote that note to Rosie Perrin.
    That incident marked a turning-point in my relationship with the doctor. He noticed me now and then and would say: “Ankle feeling all right now?” and after a while, just:
    “All right?”
    I was getting quite fond of him. He gave me the impression that he really cared that 1 was ‘all right’, even though 1 was left under the azalea bush and had brought gipsies into the house.
    The big house in the neighbourhood was the Grange. It was owned by Sir Grant Crompton, who was regarded as

^7
    the ‘lord of the manor’. Sir Grant and Lady Crompton were the benefactors of the neighbourhood and employed quite a number of the local population; they let their farms to tenant farmers and sent a goose to the poor every Christmas.
    It was all very traditional. Lady Crompton officiated at fetes, bazaars, and such affairs which raised money for good causes. The family always appeared at church if they were in residence, sitting in those pews which had been occupied by the family for two hundred years. The servants sat immediately behind them. Sir Grant contributed generously to funds for the church’s needs and he was greatly revered by us all.
    There were two children of the household Lucian and Camilla. I used to see them riding with a groom. They seemed a very handsome and haughty pair who rarely looked our way when we passed them in the lanes they on magnificent steeds, we on foot. Estella sighed and wished she lived at the Grange and rode a white horse with her brother, equally splendidly mounted, beside her. Lucian, moreover, was much bigger and more handsome than Henry.
    Well, of course, they were “Grange folk’, and although the doctor was not exactly despised in social circles, and had on occasions even been invited to the Grange, it was suspected that it was only to make up numbers or due to the last-minute cancellation of some more worthy guest.
    Mrs. Marline was a little disgruntled about it, and had been heard to ask who the Cromptons thought they were, but when an opportunity came to extend the connection between the Grange and Commonwood House, she was delighted.
    Mrs. Marline had been engaged on some charitable work which entailed a visit to the Grange, where she had been graciously received by Lady
    Crompton, and during the interview it had transpired that both ladies were concerned about their sons’ education.
    Lady Crompton was proposing to engage a tutor for Lucian because she felt it was not quite time for him to go away to school, and, as the same problem concerned Mrs. Marline, the two ladies had a great deal to talk about. The outcome was that Lady Crompton suggested that the boys share the tutor who was to come to the Grange.
    Mrs. Marline was delighted with the idea.
    I presumed that she would share the cost of the tutor, for I heard Nanny Gilroy say that, in spite of their grandeur, the Cromptons were not ones to ‘throw their money about’ and she reckoned they were rather ‘near’. And, of course, we all knew that Mrs. Marline had the money and she would be ready to pay for what she would consider such a privilege.
    So it was arranged and every morning, except Sundays, Henry used to set off for