The Land of Summer by Charlotte Bingham

maid, was already waiting for her in her room, but that nothing was laid out in readiness on the bed or in the bathroom, or indeed anywhere else. It was most puzzling.
    ‘Have you not done anything like this before, Agnes ?’ Emmaline asked, as she looked round the room.
    ‘No, miss,’ the sad-eyed girl replied. ‘Or should that be madam, miss?’
    ‘Madam only once I am married, Agnes, and I am not married, and perhaps may never be,’ she said, attempting a joke.
    Agnes looked horrified. ‘But you’ve come all this way, Miss Nesbitt. You gotta marry now, or you’ll have an awful long journey back.’
    ‘Yes, I will, won’t I?’ Emmaline agreed. ‘Now, are you telling me that you have no idea how to help a lady dress or undress?’
    ‘No, miss, I have no idea at all,’ Agnes answered with utter truth. ‘But I am willing to learn, and I learns quick, you’ll find, ’cos I want to learn, and that’s half the battle, i’n’t it, madam, if you want to learn quick?’
    But Emmaline was hardly listening; wondering instead at the strange ways of the English, what with maids who weren’t maids, and husbands-to-be who disappeared for hours if not days at a time.
    ‘Gracious, does no one ever train maids in the way of doing their work in England, Agnes? You are the second girl assigned to me since my arrival who has had no previous experience in being a personal maid. It is so hard on you all, truly it is. Ah well, never mind that now. I will train you, and we will then work together in happy unison, or else I shall have to return you double quick to the works, shan’t I?’
    Emmaline smiled encouragingly at Agnes, hoping to cheer her up, and guessing that she could only be in her early teens, so childlike were her features, and so undeveloped her body. To her horror, she saw almost at once that tears were threatening to form in Agnes’s large eyes.
    ‘I’m a good girl at the works, miss, or is it madam, or should it be miss? Truth is I’ve never been employed outside the works, truly I haven’t, and I am ignorant, so I am, I admit it. I think it should be madam, my ma said it should be, she was sure of it, but you said … Oh dear, never tell no one I don’t even know how to address you, madam. I’m a London girl only recently come to Somerset and they will laugh at me if they hear I was that ignorant.’
    ‘Calm yourself, Agnes, please. It doesn’t matter, truly it doesn’t, particularly since we are alone, but since you ask, and since Mr Aubrey and I are not yet married, please call me Miss Emmaline. That is how I was always addressed by our maids at home. So, now, let us start again. I gather you have never dressed a lady before?’
    ‘No, Miss Emmaline,’ Agnes replied, looking dejectedly at the floor. ‘Until I came here I was cutting fabrics at the works.’
    ‘I see.’ Emmaline nodded gravely, trying not to laugh at the idea that you could take a young girl who had been cutting fabrics one day and assign her to be a personal maid the next. Only a man, and a bachelor at that, could ever think that such a thing was possible. ‘And how long have you been in service at Park House?’
    ‘Just over a week, miss. Same as everyone else.’
    ‘I
beg
your pardon?’
    The force of what Emmaline had just said surprised even her.
    ‘You have only been there a week, and the rest of the servants too?’
    ‘Yes. I’m just the same as everyone else, miss. I ain’t no different, truly I ain’t.’ Agnes looked as though she was once more about to burst into tears at any moment.
    ‘The entire staff, you mean?’ Emmaline stared at the girl in disbelief. ‘Are you saying that none of the servants at Park House – that everyone has only been working there for a week?’
    ‘Yes, Miss Emmaline. The last staff, they were all – well, they all left just before we come, miss. We’re all new, though course most of them’s been in service before, unlike what I have been. I mean Cook, and Mrs Graham,