The Ladies of Grace Adieu: And Other Stories by Susanna Clarke Page B

in the lane in search of Mrs Mabb her feet were very sore. She thought she would stop and bathe them; but as she went down to the river the two boys began to play a melancholy air upon the whistle and the drum.
    Upon the instant Venetia was seized by a terror so blind that she scarcely knew what she did. When she recovered herself she found that she was holding fast to the hand of a most surprized little girl of eight or nine years of age.
    "Oh! I beg your pardon. It was only the music that frightened me," she said; and then, as the girl continued to stare at her in astonishment, she added, "I used to be so fond of music you see, but now I do not care for it at all. Whenever I hear a pipe and drum I am certain that I shall be compelled to dance for ever and ever without stopping. Does not it strike you that way sometimes?"
    The little girls looked very much amazed but did not answer her. Their names were Hebe, Marjory, Joan and Nan, but as to which was which Venetia had not the least idea in the world. She bathed her feet and lay down to rest - for she was still very weak - in the sweet green grass. She heard Hebe, Marjory, Joan or Nan observe to the others that Miss Moore had, as was well known, run mad for the love of handsome Captain Fox.
    The little girls had got some daisies to pull apart and as they did so they made wishes. One wished for a sky-blue carriage spotted with silver, another to see a dolphin in Kissingland river, one to marry the Archbishop of Canterbury and wear a diamond-spangled mitre (which she insisted she would be entitled to do as an Archbishop's wife though the others were more doubtful), and one that there would be bread and beef dripping for her supper.
    "I wish to know where I may find Mrs Mabb's house," said Venetia.
    There was a silence for a moment and then either Hebe, Marjory, Joan or Nan remarked contemptuously that every7 one knew that.
    "Every one, it seems, but me," said Venetia to the blue sky and the sailing clouds.
    "Mrs Mabb lives at the bottom of Billy Little's garden," said another child.
    "Behind a great heap of cabbage leaves," said a third.
    "Then I doubt that we can mean the same person," said Venetia, "Mrs Mabb is a very fine lady as I understand."
    "Indeed, she is," agreed the first, "the finest lady that ever there was. She has a coachman . . ."
    " . . . a footman . . ."
    " . . . a dancing master . . ."
    ". . . and a hundred ladies-in-waiting . . ."
    ". . . and one of the ladies-in-waiting has to eat the dull parts of Mrs Mabb's dinner so that Mrs Mabb only ever has to eat roast pork, plum-cake and strawberry jam . . ."
    "I see," said Venetia.
    ". . . and they all live together at the bottom of Billy Little's garden."
    "Do not they find that rather inconvenient?" asked Venetia, sitting up.
    But Hebe, Marjory, Joan and Nan could not suppose that there would be any particular inconvenience attached to a residence at the bottom of Billy Little's garden. However, they were able to provide Venetia with the further information that Mrs Mabb drank her breakfast coffee out of an acorn-cup, that her chamberlain was a thrush and her coachman a blackbird and that she herself was "about the size of a pepper-pot".
    "Well," said Venetia, "what you tell me is very strange, but no stranger than many of the things that have happened to me recently. Indeed it seems to me to be all of a piece with them and so perhaps you will have the goodness to shew me where I may find this curious house."
    "Oh!" said one child, clapping her hand to her mouth in alarm.
    "You had much better not," said another kindly.
    "She could turn you into butter," said a third.
    "Which might melt," observed the fourth.
    "Or a pudding."
    "Which might get eaten."
    "Or a drawing of yourself on white paper."
    "Which someone might set fire to, you know, without meaning to."
    But Venetia insisted upon their taking her to Mrs Mabb's house straight away, which at length they agreed to do.
    Billy Little was an ancient farm labourer