Mary Olivier: A Life | Page 8

big hall, waiting for them. She looked much larger and more important than Mamma.
"Aunt Bella, have you got my new lamb?"
She tried not to shriek it out, because Aunt Bella was nearly always poorly, and Mamma told her that if you shrieked at her she would be ill.
Mamma said "Sh-sh-sh!" And Aunt Bella whispered something and she heard Mamma answer, "Better not."
"If she sees it," said Aunt Bella, "she'll understand."
Mamma shook her head at Aunt Bella.
"Edward would like it," said Aunt Bella. "He wanted to give it her himself. It's his present."
Mamma took her hand and they followed Aunt Bella through the servants' hall into the kitchen. The servants were all there, Rose and Annie and Cook, and Mrs. Fisher, the housekeeper, and Giles, the young footman. They all stared at her in a queer, kind way as she came in.
A low screen was drawn close round one corner of the fireplace; Uncle Edward and Pidgeon, the bailiff, were doing something to it with a yellow horse-cloth.
Uncle Edward came to her, looking down the side of his big nose. He led her to the screen and drew it away.
Something lay on the floor wrapped in a piece of dirty blanket. When Uncle Edward pushed back the blanket a bad smell came out. He said, "Here's your lamb, Mary. You're just in time."
She saw a brownish grey animal with a queer, hammer-shaped head and long black legs. Its body was drawn out and knotted like an enormous maggot. It lay twisted to one side and its eyes were shut.
"That isn't my lamb."
"It's the lamb I always said Miss Mary was to have, isn't it, Pidgeon?"
"Yes, Squoire, it's the lamb you bid me set asoide for little Missy."
"Then," said Mary, "why does it look like that?"
"It's very ill," Mamma said gently. "Poor Uncle Edward thought you'd like to see it before it died. You are glad you've seen it, aren't you?"
"No."
Just then the lamb stirred in its blanket; it opened its eyes and looked at her.
She thought: "It's my lamb. It looked at me. It's my lamb and it's dying. My lamb's dying."
The bad smell came again out of the blanket. She tried not to think of it. She wanted to sit down on the floor beside the lamb and lift it out of its blanket and nurse it; but Mamma wouldn't let her.
When she got home Mamma took down the toy lamb from the chest of drawers and brought it to her.
She sat quiet a long time holding it in her lap and stroking it.
The stiff eyes of the toy lamb stared away over its ears.

III
I.
Jenny was cross and tugged at your hair when she dressed you to go to Chadwell Grange.
"Jenny-Wee, Mamma says if I'm not good Aunt Bella will be ill. Do you think it's really true?"
Jenny tugged. "I'd thank you for some of your Aunt Bella's illness," she said.
"I mean," Mary said, "like Papa was in the night. Every time I get 'cited and jump about I think she'll open her mouth and begin."
"Well, if she was to you'd oughter be sorry for her."
"I am sorry for her. But I'm frightened too."
"That's not being good," said Jenny. But she left off tugging.
Somehow you knew she was pleased to think you were not really good at Aunt Bella's, where Mrs. Fisher dressed and undressed you and you were allowed to talk to Pidgeon.
Roddy and Dank said you ought to hate Uncle Edward and Pidgeon and Mrs. Fisher, and not to like Aunt Bella very much, even if she was Mamma's sister. Mamma didn't really like Uncle Edward; she only pretended because of Aunt Bella.
Uncle Edward had an ugly nose and a yellow face widened by his black whiskers; his mouth stretched from one whisker to the other, and his black hair curled in large tufts above his ears. But he had no beard; you could see the whole of his mouth at once; and when Aunt Bella came into the room his little blue eyes looked up off the side of his nose and he smiled at her between his tufts of hair. It was dreadful to think that Mark and Dank and Roddy didn't like him. It might hurt him so much that he would never be happy again.
About Pidgeon she was not quite sure. Pidgeon was very ugly. He had long stiff legs, and a long stiff face finished off with a fringe of red whiskers that went on under his chin. Still, it was not nice to think of Pidgeon being unhappy either. But Mrs. Fisher was large and rather like Aunt Bella, only softer and more bulging. Her round face had a high red polish on it always, and when she saw you coming her eyes twinkled, and her red forehead and her big cheeks