Chapter 1
“Harriet! I have a letter for us from Francine!” cried Daphne, tucking her arm into her friend’s. It gave Harriet some support to help her walk a bit faster, too, since Harriet had been orphaned in a coach accident, and her leg had never totally healed.
“What does she say?” asked Harriet. “I am glad she can write to you without The Kipper opening it.”
“I don’t see how she justifies it, myself, opening the mail of orphans. Why, it might be confidential information from your solicitor, if you had been left well enough off to have one,” said Daphne. “I think The Kipper just likes to pry.”
“Well, look at the fuss she made about Francine sending us a bonnet each, wanting to know why, and where they came from; I swear she was ready to accuse Francie of stealing them,” said Harriet. “I am glad I was able to show her the line in her letter that Francie had to dispose of her mother’s stock so the shop would be available, and preferred to send gifts to friends than have them sent to charity. I wager she knew The Kipper would stick her fishy nose in.”
Miss Herring was not a popular preceptress, as might be seen by this frank exchange.
“Well, as I have parents, of a sort, she can at least write to me without The Kipper daring to read them,” said Daphne. She had been the recipient of both the villager straw, lined with cerulean blue, which suited her pale, Saxon prettiness, and the sage-green capote with bronze-green ribbons to pass on to Harriet, ideal for a girl whose hair was on the red side of chestnut. If sent to Harriet, both girls suspected that Miss Herring would have had a new bonnet. Girls at school on some sufferance as orphans did not, in her book, deserve anything, and only the Principal’s strong rule allowed Harriet to keep the gowns she had. Miss Phipps cordially detested Miss Herring, but needed a teacher of geography with globes.
The girls reached their den, a carefully constructed shelter hidden deep in the shrubbery, inside a laurel bush, which Daphne had laughed over, and called most appropriate to her own name. There was a tarred sheet to keep off light rain, and a couple of broken chairs, mended roughly by the girls. It was nothing special, but to Daphne and Harriet it was a haven. Daphne had a father and stepmother, but she was no parlour border to have her own room, and the girls shared a room with four younger ones. Privacy was golden.
“Dear girls,” wrote Francine,
“My darling Stoat has taken a house near Prior’s Eleigh so we might both be close to our friends, and he says I might invite you to stay over Christmas. We are living in the house formerly owned by Major Braxton, or rather, leased by him; but Stoat has managed to buy it so we can make it our own. It’s a nice place, a little large for just two of us, but it is to be hoped that we shall fill it duly with a sufficiency of progeny to make it more convenable.”
“Isn’t it fun that you can notice that Francine is French even before she slips in words like ‘convenable’ when she can’t find a better English word?” said Harriet. “Such a weird name to call her husband, ‘Stoat.’”
“I think his name is Stotham,” said Daphne. “His mother’s maiden name. Francine did write of it, remember?”
“Oh, yes, he is not the oldest son to use such a name, but all first sons are called something outlandish – Bohemond, wasn’t it?”
They both giggled.
“Under the circumstances, you can see why he’s glad to be ‘Stoat’ can’t you?” said Daphne.
“Yes,” agreed Harriet. “Go on.”
“I have written to Miss Phipps to secure permission for Harriet, and to Mr. Kempe, and as Stoat does not use the courtesy title he is entitled to until he has a nephew, I thought a plain Mr. and Mrs. Brierly would not make your stepmother jealous enough to forbid it, Daphne. Please say you will both come! Mr. and Mrs. Goldsteen are looking forward to meeting Harriet – if they like you, Harry, there’ll be a job waiting for you as companion to their spaniels, and as they are childless, you will be, essentially, the daughter of the house. I await your replies,
Francine.”
“How clever of Francine to remember, through all her own troubles, that my stepmother would not like me meeting people who are above her own class,” said Daphne. “I must script a masterpiece of a letter to her. She doesn’t want me home for Christmas, but it would be like her to make me stay at school if she thought I would enjoy it too much.”
“Oh, write that your emigrée friend who married requires a companion to meet her new husband’s family, as moral support,” said Harriet.
“That’s a good one,” said Daphne. “If Phippy doesn’t forbid you to go for any of our misdeeds, it should be fun; she can’t really stop me if Papa says yes.”
Daphne laboured on a letter.
“Dear Mama,” she opened, and pulled a face. “And that’s two lies in the first two words as she is neither my Mama, nor is she dear.”
“Just write it,” said Harriet.
“I have had an invitation for the Christmas period to the new home of my friend, Francine. You might recall I have mentioned her, an emigrée, left penniless when her mother fled the revolution in France. She has made a respectable marriage, but is nervous of meeting some of her new English in-laws, and would like someone quintessentially English as her companion over Christmas. I expect I will be de trop most of the time, with a newly wed couple, but I would like to help her out, if you are willing for me to go. Miss Phipps was surprised that I said I was sure you would expect me to stay in school rather than have a family Christmas, so perhaps this is a solution?
Your obedient daughter,
Daphne.”
“Another lie in the last line,” laughed Harriet, reading over her shoulder. “A master stroke to suggest that Phippy was asking questions; your stepmother would dislike her motives to be questioned, I wager.”
“Oh, she would,” said Daphne. “Mind, it’s a pity Francie and her Stoat have rounded up all the spies, it would have been famous sport if we might have been able to catch Bonapartist spies.”
“I could do without that much excitement, I fancy,” said Harriet.
oOoOo
Highfield End
Highfield
Near Bishop’s Stortford
“My dear Daphne,
What have you been saying to make that awful woman ask questions? You are a tiresome girl. Well, I don’t care how bored you are in darkest Essex [Prior’s Eleigh? One has never even heard of the place, your bucolic friend and her farmer husband sound tedious in the extreme. You had better purchase yourself a couple of evening gowns, however, to make sure the hayseeds don’t get the chance to look down on you, and you grow like a weed and doubtless show unsuitable amounts of ankle in your current gowns. Which is no problem in a girls’ school, but I will not have any skirters of what passes for society in the country laugh at you. I’ve sent a money order for four hundred pounds to Phipps to hold for you so you may go into Brentwood and order a couple of gowns. Do not pay more than two hundred pounds for any one gown, if you are clever, you can probably stretch to as many as four or five gowns with that.”
Do behave yourself and do not make yourself a laughing stock to show me up.
Your mother,
Amy Kempe.”
“I can hear a whine in her voice in every sentence,” said Daphne. “There are no flies on Phippy, do you suppose we can ask her to take us into Brentwood and buy heaps of lovely fabric, and ask if Francine will drive over to help us cut out gowns? She’s a marvel and so sure with the scissors, and then we can sew them up ourselves.”
Miss Phipps was nobody’s fool and she had a fair idea of Mrs. Kempe’s motives. She was also as irritated as Daphne meant her to be when Daphne showed that good woman her own letter, where the preceptress might see herself referred to by her surname only, like a chambermaid. Miss Phipps had no great pretensions to the aristocracy and was therefore more alive to what was due to her than had she come from stock with a title somewhere, which would enable her to laugh it off.
“I have a better idea, Daphne,” she said. “I will send to dear Francine, Mrs. Brierly, I should say, and ask if she will pick you up to escort into Brentwood, and then come back here to help you cut out some gowns. You are correct to think that your money will go further spent on fabric than on a modiste. I also strongly urge that you do not spend all of this, but keep much of it against emergency.”
“Yes, Miss Phipps, I thought if I took one hundred pounds, I could get enough for at least four gowns each for the two of us, and trims, and caps and if we talk fast, Francine might be persuaded to help us with turbans and bonnets.”
Miss Phipps laughed.
“She probably will, for she is a generous soul, as are you, to think of Harriet. I strongly suggest a Norfolk Shawl each, which will eat into your hundred pounds; take one hundred and fifty, for you may always return with some over, whereas you do not want to be embarrassed by being short.”
“No, indeed,” said Daphne. “And though Francine would make it up, I would be mortified if she had to do so.”
“Quite so,” said Miss Phipps. She knew perfectly well that Francine herself counted every shilling twice, even though she was married to one of the wealthiest men in England, and accounted it an excellent trait.
oOoOo
“I am here, enfin, mes amies, parbleu! Mais je suis si heureux de vous voir! Me, who could not be happier with my cher mari, yet I am cast into transports of delight to see again my dear friends!”
“Francine, I have never heard you use that much French in one burst before, even to put down M. Despard,” laughed Harriet.
“My Stoat wishes to improve my French accent to pass more for Paris than Colchester,” said Francine. “Eh bien! It is a good habit to have, to be able to sound entirely French, when undoubtedly there are still spies about. But I am good, so good, and I have not denounced M. Despard as a Bonapartiste, though it would have been very funny,” she added.
“You don’t change, I am glad to say,” said Daphne. “Did Phippy tell you why we asked to borrow you?”
“Yes, indeed, and I will be most pleased to see you both outfitted properly, and moreover I will sew those parts which are most challenging, since both of you have fingers which might delight an elephant, but achieve subtle effects in cloth they will not.”
“Oh, Francine, will you really? I was going to ask you to cut out what we could manage,” said Daphne. “I never hoped that you might help with the sewing.”
“Ce n’est pas rien. I never thought I would miss having something to sew, but I do. I have made a layette for our first child when he or she arrives which Stoat says rivals a royal baby, and I have seen that all our napery is sufficiently decorative, and when Phippy’s letter arrived, Stoat said ‘Thank G-d for that, you now have something to keep your fingers occupied before I wake up in the morning to find myself embroidered.’ He is very droll, but I have taken to making bonnets for the people I like because I have no tasks to do until he entertains and the time is very heavy.”
It turned out that Mr. Stotham Brierly had driven his wife to the school, to be a more sober escort to three giggling girls than one of them trying to appear a staid matron. Francine did not even try to dress as a staid matron, since it made her look as if she had borrowed someone else’s clothes. Only her newly coiffed hairstyle of short hair with little ringlets under absurd lace caps gave even a nod to her married status, and Stoat resigned himself to being de trop for a while, save as coachman. He did not disapprove; Francine had been forced to grow up rather fast, when she have become involved in the spying of her unpleasant cousin. He loved to see her have fun, and sat, smiling, as Daphne and Harriet caught their friend up with all the school news.
“And M. Despard does not know yet where the mouse came from,” said Daphne. “Save that he regards Harriet as a saviour for having removed it.”
“It gnawed on his ear,” said Harriet. “I was terrified of the consequences, poor thing, it might have been poisoned.”
“Even so!” said Francine.
oOoOo
The shopping trip to Brentwood was exciting for three young girls let loose amongst fabric, ribbon, laces, and other notions. Stoat was that rare man who, without taking a deep delight in fabrics, vicariously enjoyed the pleasures they brought to the girls.
He also smiled when Francine beckoned a haberdasher, passed over some money and indicated that she would pay for the fabric a plainly-clad girl clearly coveted, but could not afford.
“She will get snippy about charity,” he said, quietly.
“Of a surety; I told the haberdasher to tell her that there was some of the same out the back which was water stained, which was much cheaper if she could use it. She will think the haberdashery fussy when she does not find an obvious stain, but I merely paid the difference between what she could afford, and what it cost.”
“You are sweet,” said Stoat.
Her eyes danced.
“You may explore that thought more, later,” she said.
Daphne spoke out as they drove out of Chelmsford.
“This isn’t the way back to the school.”
“No; I spoke with Phippy and I have stolen you for the rest of the term as well as over Christmas. Stoat said I might. Your trunks have been sent on.”
“Mr. Brierly is a very kind man,” said Harriet.
“Indeed; and I adore him,” said Francine.
