In for a Penny by Rose Lerner Page B

me how all your nice things were broken.”
    “Oh, the boys don’t live here anymore,” someone said from the doorway, and Penelope turned. This must be Tom Kedge. His sunburnt, genial face and massive body seemed too big for the house, as did his stentorian voice; it was probably just the right volume for directing men in a wheat field.
    “It’s not like the old days.” Kedge shook his head. “People used to be content with their lot, and now—new men in and out of the district every year, and half the population up and emigrating to America. And the soldiers—I hate to speak ill of men who fought for their country, but it seems like a lot of them came back wrong. Couldn’t have ’em in the house anymore! Not safe for my Sally.” He smiled and winked at his wife.
    Mrs. Kedge smiled back at her husband. “I do miss the racket sometimes. It’s so quiet in the house. But that’s progress, isn’t it? Things change. We shouldn’t like to live in the Dark Ages!”
    Penelope looked around at the comfort and the cleanliness and pictured again the sullen, lean faces of the workers, even the boys. No, it would not do to have them tramping in and out and getting mud on Mrs. Kedge’s nice floor or breaking her fine china. Mrs. Kedge was too good for that now.
    She thought of her father’s managers and foremen. Her father was friendly enough with them at the brewery, but hecertainly did not invite them to dinner in Russell Square. Penelope tried to imagine those men drinking a glass of brandy at the mahogany dining table, but it was impossible; and they would hardly have wanted to. Yet her father had known some of those men from boyhood. So had her mother. Penelope remembered meeting a Mrs. Raeburn, who worked at the brewery affixing labels to kegs, bottles, and casks. The woman had pinched her cheek and told her that she and Mrs. Brown used to steal pies off a cart together.
    Penelope knew that people found her mother distasteful; now she looked at Mrs. Kedge sticking out her pinky as she drank from a teacup painted with fat little Chinese boys and understood how they felt. She hated herself for it.
    Kedge stepped out of the doorway. A much smaller man entered the room in his wake. An unprepossessing fellow in his middle thirties, his dirty linen and pompous air made him look even plainer than he would have without it. He waited, a small smirk on his face, until Mr. Kedge said, “The head of our flock, Mr. Snively.”
    “How charming it is to see you again, Lord Bedlow, even under such sad circumstances,” the vicar said. “Your father will be severely missed by all true souls at Loweston. I am deeply pleased to meet your ladyship. It is an honor, truly, Lady Bedlow.” He took her hand and bowed, a little too low, in a way that made Penelope wonder if he were not trying to show up the Kedges as ill-bred.
    “Thank you, Mr. Snively,” she said. “I—”
    “He’s right about Lord Bedlow,” Kedge interrupted. “A real gentleman. If he’d raised the rents any higher in ’16, we’d all have lost our holdings to the bank.”
    Nev nodded. “He would never have wanted that.” Penelope didn’t think anyone else caught the way his mouth twisted over the words. “You old-timers are the backbone of this place. You’ve lived here since before I was born, haven’t you?”
    Penelope was amazed how well he did this. She was nearly paralyzed with shyness and distaste, but Nev sat easily at the Kedges’ table, looking not at all out of place, the sun from the window glinting on his cinnamon hair and candor shining in his blue eyes. Tom Kedge would be eating out of his hand.
    Kedge puffed out his chest a little. “I have indeed. Why, I remember when you was that big, running about wanting to play with the workhorses!”
    Nev smiled at him. “I was hoping you might advise me on what is best to be done to get things back in shape.”
    “I am so glad you asked,” Mr. Snively began. “I’ve been keeping a