Eliza’s Daughter by Joan Aiken

Author:Joan Aiken
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2013-08-15T16:00:00+00:00

And the goodbye to Elinor had been surprisingly painful.

‘I shall miss you, Eliza,’ she had admitted – rare words from Elinor, who never alluded to her own feelings. ‘I wish you were my daughter.’ And she laid her hand gently on the farewell present I had made her – a muff I had contrived – clumsily enough – from an old remnant of horsehair blanket, with the hair still on the outside, and lined internally with sheepswool from the hedges. It was a poor enough sort of gift, but I had noticed that her hands were always cold; she had a trick of tucking them into her armpits.

‘And I wish, very much, Cousin Elinor, that you were my mother.’ (But not that Edward Ferrars were my father, I thought. Perhaps it was due to his bleak parentage that Nell had become such a pattern of selfishness and spite?)

‘As to your own mother,’ Elinor said hurriedly, ‘my very best advice to you, Eliza, is not to speculate about her. There can be no profit – none, none! – in any conjectures – rather the reverse. Put her entirely out of your mind. That is my most earnest counsel. There – I hear Edward calling. Goodbye, child. You have been such a comfort to me – run along.’

She had raised the clumsy muff to cover her shaking mouth.

‘Goodbye, Cousin Elinor. I – I hope that we meet again soon.’

But a brief gesture of her head seemed to deny any such possibility.

***

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