Had We Never Loved by Patricia Veryan Page B

upbringing, poor chit, how could he blame her? “I suppose,” he began, “you have never been taught—”
    â€œThen you can s’pose again! And don’t be thinking as I’m a iggerant gypsy trollop!”
    â€œAs if I would! Do not say such things!”
    â€œYou says I ain’t been taught,” she said fiercely. “Ye think I cannot do nothing—don’t know nothing! Well, I can do things! All kinds o’ things what you couldn’t do! Like … like finding food when there ain’t none. And getting fires to burn when the wood’s wet. And how to turn a shirt so it’ll last twice as long; and how much to pay them as asks five times what they ought for a loaf of bread!”
    â€˜Poor little creature,’ he thought. ‘What a dreadful life she has led.’ And he asked gently. “How much would you pay them, Amy?”
    At once the flashing eyes were softened by mirth. A dimple peeped, and she said mischievously, “Nothing, of course! I’d prig the loaf.” Her amusement faded. “And there ye go, looking down yer nose at me! Well, I’d like to see yer fine ladies go on living without no roofs over their heads, or if there wasn’t no one to wait on ’em hand and hoof, and kiss their—” She saw Glendenning’s covert grin and broke off, biting her lip. Before he could comment, however, she went on proudly. “I can write, too! Writ a letter I did! And sent it off! And I can read! Look here…!” With a swirl of skirts she ran to the piled crates where were her brush and comb and the little mirror. She pulled open a makeshift door on a lower crate, revealing several books neatly propped with a brick. She took out a much worn and dog-eared Bible and flew back to flourish it under Glendenning’s nose. “Open it! Go on! Open it anywhere, and I’ll read it!”
    â€œAmy, my dear child, I did not mean—”
    With an exclamation of impatience she opened the Bible, closed her eyes, and stabbed a finger at the page. “There! Now ye cannot say as I chose a bit I knows by heart.” She bent her head and began to read slowly and with a painful care that he thought ineffably touching.
    â€œâ€˜Let him that stoled steal no more, but ray—ra-ther … let him … la-bour—’” Belatedly, the meaning of the words dawned on her. Moaning, she stopped reading.
    Glendenning struggled to contain his hilarity.
    Amy lay down the Bible, put both hands over her face, then peeped at him from between her fingers.
    He was undone, and shouted with laughter. “If ever … I saw justice … meted out.”
    She tried to keep a sober face, but his mirth was contagious and soon her clear peals were mingling with his deeper laugh. How it came about, she could not have told, but somehow she was perched on his knee, his arm around her waist.
    â€œWell now, Mistress Consett,” he said. “And are you properly chastised?”
    She smiled into his laughing face. “Ye won that hand, all right.”
    â€œPerhaps. But although you were hoist with your own petard, you proved your point, ma’am. You can read. Your uncle warrants a medal for teaching you so well.”
    Her eyes searched his face. She said with sudden desperate intensity, “Ye ain’t a’mocking of me, lordship? Did I read it right?”
    â€œYou did indeed.”
    â€œAh, but I made mistakes, didn’t I?” She sighed, and said disconsolately, “‘Stoled’ didn’t sound just right, and I said ‘rather’ wrong at first.”
    â€œYes. But you corrected yourself.”
    She sprang up, and said passionately, “If only I knowed how to read better!”
    â€œâ€˜Knew,’ pretty one. Not ‘knowed.’”
    â€œThere! You see! But ’tis cruel hard. There’s so much to learn!”
    â€œFor all of us, child.