The Youngest Miss Ward by Joan Aiken

Author:Joan Aiken
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK
Published: 2018-03-06T10:25:12+00:00

XI

Back in Lady Elstow’s room, Hatty saw that two girls had arrived and were sitting on a sopha in attitudes of exaggerated indifference at some distance from their mother. Hatty would have liked to study them, but her attention was claimed by the Countess who demanded at once: ‘Well? Did you give that dismal woman her marching orders? Have you sent her to the rightabout?’

‘Miss Stornoway understands, ma’am, that she is to leave your employment,’ Hatty said loudly and coldly.

‘You made sure she knew that she is to go today – without loss of time?’

Hatty merely bowed her head. The Countess studied her sharply through a lorgnette.

‘Very well. Now, these are my daughters, the Lady Barbara and the Lady Drusilla. Come here, girls.’

With seeming reluctance the girls slowly approached. Lady Elstow eyed them with a total lack of enthusiasm.

‘Well, girls, this is your new preceptress, Miss Ward. She is the step-daughter of your sister Ursula. And her mother was a Wisbech. Bear that in mind.’

The girls curtsied stiffly and favoured Hatty with a cool appraisal which she, now that she had licence to do so, returned with considerable interest. Lady Ursula’s two youngest sisters were of very different heights and complexions. Barbara, aged perhaps fifteen or sixteen, was tall and massive, resembling her mother in build. She had a shock of untamed frizzy black hair, thick wrists and ankles, a large, not unhandsome face with a rough skin, bright complexion, alert dark eyes, a wide mouth and an expression of sullen ferocity. Drusilla, the younger, was completely different in build: much smaller, with spindly limbs, a pale skin, thin protruding lips and bulging ophthalmic, brilliant, positively glittering blue eyes. Blond hair draggled forward over her forehead in a sparse fringe and was gathered behind her head into a knot. Both girls were untidily dressed in ill-fitting clothes that did not suit them. Drusilla – perhaps about twelve, Hatty thought – eyed her new governess with less absolute hostility than did her sister, but with a look of cool contempt. Barbara’s baleful stare was made even more belligerent and sinister, Hatty realized, because the poor girl suffered from a severe cast in her left eye; while one eye was fixed on her new governess, the other one stared off into a distant corner of the room as if it were focussed on some subversive concern of its own.

‘You may leave me now,’ said Lady Elstow impatiently. ‘Be gone! Glastonbury –’ for he had remained by the door – ‘bring me my eggnog.’

‘Yes, my Lady.’

‘At once.’

‘Yes, my Lady.’

The two girls left the room without troubling to look round and see if Hatty followed them. She did so, feeling all the awkwardness of her situation. To her relief they went to the schoolroom, where they stood on either side of the meagre fire, eyeing her in a combative manner.

‘Well!’ said Barbara. ‘What are you going to teach us?’

‘Yes!’ echoed her younger sister. ‘What are you going to teach us?’

Drusilla had, Hatty noticed, a slight impediment in her speech; not exactly a lisp, but a kind of hesitation.

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