Jack Mercybright by Mary E. Pearce

Author:Mary E. Pearce [Pearce, Mary E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family Saga, Romance, nineteenth century, victorian, vintage, English countryside, nostalgia, rural, love and marriage, country life
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Family Saga)
Published: 2018-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

But the child born to them that autumn was a daughter, and was named Linn, after Nenna’s mother. Nenna wept at first with disappointment. She would not have the cot placed anywhere near her. It had to stand against the far wall. But then, seeing Jack’s delight in the baby, she recovered and asked for it to be placed in her arms.

‘You never said you wanted a daughter.’

‘I didn’t know myself till I got her,’ he said. ‘I left that part to the Almighty.’

‘Do you think she’ll forgive me for being disappointed?’

‘It depends how you treat her from now on.’

‘I shall give her lots of brothers and sisters,’ Nenna said. ‘She shall never be a lonely little girl as I was.’

On a working day late in October she brought the baby, wrapped in a woollen shawl in her arms, up to the farm for the men to see and give their blessing.

‘She’ll do well,’ said Peter Luppitt, ‘born with a waxing moon as she was.’

‘Peter’s right there,’ said his brother Paul. ‘I always plants my cabbages when the moon is waxing and you know what mighty things they always grow to.’

‘Married people should always get their children born with a waxing moon,’ said Peter. ‘It’s only common sense.’

‘That ent always easy,’ said William Gauntlet, with a slow and solemn shake of his head.

‘She ent going to open her eyes at us, is she? I reckon she knows we ent much to look at.’

‘I don’t wonder she’s sleeping,’ Jack said. ‘She was up half the night screaming her lungs out.’

‘Got a tooth coming through, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘More likely wind,’ said Oliver Lacey.

‘You want to go to old Grannie Balsam up at Goodlands. She makes the best gripe-water in the district.’

‘Have you took her up on Tootle Knap?’ asked Gauntlet. ‘You should always take a new born babby up on top of Tootle Knap. It’s the highest point in the parish, you see, and gives the child a good start in life, like being baptised or having a mole on her left elbow.’ Jack only smiled, but Nenna wanted to go at once, so he went with her to the top of the mound known as Tootle Knap and there among the elm trees, with the yellow leaves flit-flittering down, he took the baby between his hands and held her up as high as he could.

‘There you are, Linn Mercybright! What do you think of the air up here, then? Suit you nicely, eh, does it?’ And on the way down again he said to Nenna, ‘At least she can’t say we didn’t do all the right things for her!’

‘Don’t you believe in luck?’ Nenna asked.

‘I ought to,’ he said. ‘The way things are going for me just lately, I never see a magpie without I see two!’

He went back to work drilling wheat in the Sliplands, with Harvey Stretton up behind in charge of the seed-box, and a little while later John Tuller came across on his way to the farmhouse.

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