The Observations Read Online Free PDF

dresses apart from this garment and the—thing you were wearing yesterday?“
    I shook my head.
    “I thought as much,” she says. “Then you will need clothes will you not? Nothing you have is suitable.”
    “Yes marm, of course,” I says. “But what I mean is—the other measurements.”
    She looked at me blankly. “What other measurements?” she says, and then she turned her back on me and hurried out the room with her piece of paper.
    Perhaps she intended to draw my portrait and wanted to get the proportions right or what have you. As I was stood there thinking, the missus climbed the stairs to her room. I wondered what she would do in there, all alone. There was the faint sound of a door closing and then silence except for in the distance the mournful hooting of a train and closer by my stomach grumbling with hunger.
    I turned to pick up the porridge pot and as I did so happened to glance at the grate. I seen at once that the hearth had been swep clean and washed and that the
1/2
burnt book had disappeared altogether.
    Before I collected the eggs, I had a quick skelly around the place. On one side of the house was the stables, on the other the vegetable gardens. Up the lane was the farm and byre where I’d been yesterday. The mansion itself must have been there donkeys years, the sandstone walls were dirty grey with age. For the most part it was two storeys high, with a few single storey wings built on. The chimneys were tall and from the layout of the roofs it looked as though there was a couple of other attics as well as the one that contained my little room. Here and there, the gables was notched to make them look like battlements. I dare say once upon a time it must have been grand enough but now everything looked run down. The window glass was cracked in several places, the paintwork was peeling and blistered and all the paths choked with weeds. Not that I knew much about it but either there wasn’t enough money to maintain the place or they didn’t keep enough staff.
    Part of me was glad of the extra sleep I’d been allowed but funny enough I had an urge to throw myself into something, the dirtier and more difficult the task she give me the better. So I took a basket and went out to the hen run. Jesus Murphy you wouldn’t think a few hens could stink so bad. The only way to do it was to go round with your breath held. Some of the eggs had hen skitters on them too, it near made me boke. But I got nine without breaking any then crawled out the run backwards gasping for breath. When I turned round who was stood in the yard staring at me with a big grin on his phizog and his hands in his pockets but the Highland Jocky from the day before. I near enough jumped out my skin.
    “What the flip are you doing there?” I shouts at him. “Are you flipping following me?”
    I must explain that my language was only rough because he had put the heart across in me appearing out of nowhere and besides I was none too pleased to see him, he was a pest, not yet 16 year old but a more lecherous devil never put an arm in a coat.
    “Keech,” he says, that being a foul word in his own language. “Could hi not be hasking you the same?”
    “Flip off and die,” I says. “You great lump.”
    “Hi’ll giff you a lump,” he says with a grin then he put his hands on his hips so his fingers pointed to where his jack was pushing at his trousers, it was up and angry. Then he says, “Fwhy don’t you and me go hover to that barn hand lie down thegether like man and fwhife?”
    He took a step forwards so I lobbed an egg, it caught him on the jaw and dripped down a yolky beard onto his scarf and waistcoat. It was so comical I could not help but chuckle. The boy swep his hand across his chin and wiped the mess on his trouser leg. Then he grinned like a madman and stepped towards me again. I was about to throw another egg when I seen the missus come hurrying towards us so instead I says to the boy, “Now you are in for it when