The Innkeeper's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

clear up. Joe pulled Mr Hemp another pint.’
    Bella didn’t add that she’d noticed Joe hadn’t charged the customer or that he’d topped up his own tankard at the same time.
    ‘I don’t want you all bickering,’ her mother griped. ‘We’ve got to work together.’
    ‘Yes, Ma. I know,’ Bella said, but felt frustrated and not a little peeved. Though she realized that her brothers were working hard during the day, she too was busy in the house during the day as well as in the inn at night; Joe seemed to blatantly indulge himself by chatting to the customers, William often didn’t turn up to do his share, and their father didn’t appear to notice.
    ‘Father,’ she said one morning when they were alone in the taproom. ‘Could we work out a rota for the evenings?’
    ‘How do ya mean?’ Joseph asked. He sat down on one of the benches.
    Bella hesitated. ‘Well, so that we could each have a night off now and then; I mean now that we’re not so busy, now that ’labourers have gone. If, say, Joe and William came in together, then you and I could take a full night off, and if you and me were in, then William and Joe could take the night off.’
    Her father frowned. ‘But they do come in together. They were both in last night.’
    ‘They were both in, yes,’ Bella answered. ‘But Joe wasn’t serving. He was having a game of shove-ha’penny with some of ’customers, so William and I served.’
    Her father wouldn’t have noticed, she thought, as her mother had looked in, seen that Bella and William were managing and called Joseph to come to the kitchen and have some supper. Then he’d gone to bed.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ he said after a moment’s pause. ‘Not sure if either of them is up to looking after ’customers on their own.’
    ‘Well, then, I could come in with William and Joe could come in with you,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t need all four of us every night of ’week. It would be a good business if it did,’ she added lightly. ‘We’d be made of brass then, wouldn’t we?’
    Joseph nodded. ‘Aye, we would that.’ He looked at Bella for a moment. ‘You’ll do all right, Bella,’ he said. ‘I’ve no worries about you. None at all. How old are you now?’
    ‘I’ll be fourteen in two weeks, Father. On October the fourth,’ she said quietly. She had met her friend Alice only recently, and Alice had told her about her job as a skivvy in a farmhouse two villages away. She had left school when she was twelve to look after her younger siblings whilst her mother worked as a washerwoman. The children were now able to fend for themselves, she told Bella, the ten-year-old looking after the younger ones after school, which was paid for by the governors of the parish.
    ‘I’m proper grown up,’ she said. ‘And earning a living.’
    Although Bella didn’t say so, she thought that Alice must be nothing but a drudge, but she also knew that Alice’s mother would be glad of her wages. They were a very poor family with a father earning little as a farm labourer.
    She regretted not being able to fulfil her own ambition to be a teacher. I like little children, she thought, and remembered how only a year or two ago she used to read Nell a story when she went to bed, to help her sleep; Nell was afraid of the dark and Bella would sit in her room with a flickering candle and read a few pages from her favourite book. But Nell soon got bored and would lie there, huffing and puffing and sighing and grumbling, and then would regale Bella with what she was going to do when she was grown up. It was always tales of travelling and singing and dancing, at which she said she was the best ever. Nell had no doubts of her own ability, or that she would always be able to do whatever she wanted.
    ‘Aye, all right,’ her father said, to Bella. ‘But you’ll have to sort it out and I don’t want any arguing between you; and don’t forget that ’lads have to go to work early of a morning so they won’t want to