Hope by Lesley Pearse Page A

house. She wasn’t going to skulk off through the woods. If she never set foot in Briargate again, at least the last time she left would be through the main entrance.
    The drive was much longer than she’d expected, for she’d never walked down it before. Only a couple of weeks ago she’d overheard her parents talking when she was in bed up in the loft. Father had remarked that it was high time Nell and Albert invited them to their home. He said he understood they wanted to get it all straight before asking anyone there, but he thought six months was quite long enough for that.
    The gatehouse, a rather severe-looking stone cottage with leaded window panes and a neat white picket fence around it, had been built long before Briargate. In Sir Roland Harvey’s time there had been someone there all day to open and shut gates when visitors came and went, but this had been abandoned some twenty years ago and the gates removed. Until Nell and Albert moved in, it had lain empty for many years.
    Nell opened the door only a second after Hope knocked and looked stunned to see her sister standing there. ‘Why, Hope,’ she gasped, ‘whatever brings you here?’
    ‘M’lady doesn’t want me at Briargate any more,’ Hope blurted out and promptly burst into tears.
    ‘There now,’ Nell said, putting her arms around her and drawing her into the cottage. ‘Come and tell me all about it.’
    Between hiccuping sobs Hope explained. ‘Now I’m pushed out, like I was a bit of rubbish,’ she finished up.
    She was surprised to see Nell had tears in her eyes, and it helped to know her sister felt the injustice too.
    ‘I was afraid this might happen,’ Nell admitted. She went on to say that she and their parents had never been sure it was a good idea from the very start, then added that now Hope was nine she was too big to play with Rufus anyway.
    She made a cup of tea, and it was only then that Hope began to look around.
    It was the cleanest, tidiest cottage she had ever been in. The table was scrubbed almost white; the flagstone floor the same. The stove was like new, as though Nell had only just blackleaded it. Nothing was out of place or askew. The two chairs by the stove had cushions carefully placed; the rag rug in front of it hadn’t even been stepped on. The shelves that held dishes, pots and pans had a scalloped trimming of blue and white paper. Even the dishrag was folded neatly. There was a smell of something cooking in the oven, but no sign of any preparation. Even the tin knives, forks and spoons were laid out like a row of soldiers in a box. Every one of them gleaming.
    ‘You’ve got it looking very nice,’ Hope said, but in fact she found such neatness a bit chilling. ‘We thought you might still be in a muddle as you hadn’t invited us round.’
    ‘I don’t get any time,’ Nell replied, a little too quickly. ‘Besides, it’s too small for everyone to come.’
    As far as Hope could see it was bigger than home, and Nell had a proper stove and a real sink. But she was eager to see the rest of the cottage and rushed off up the narrow stairs in the corner.
    The upstairs wasn’t just a loft like at home; Nell’s room was a proper one with a door and windows. An iron bed, a washstand with a basin and ewer, and a wooden chest were the only furniture, and the walls were whitewashed the same as downstairs. But again, everything was so neat. The quilt on the bed didn’t have one pucker in it. The curtains hung in precise folds. The bare wooden floorboards had a faint sheen on them as if they had been polished. The second room upstairs had nothing at all in it, just curtains at the window.
    ‘Is that for your baby?’ Hope asked. ‘When you get one?’
    ‘If I get one,’ Nell said. ‘So what do you think of my new home?’
    ‘It’s very tidy,’ Hope replied for want of a real compliment.
    ‘Albert likes things just so,’ Nell replied, smoothing the already smooth quilt as if she was nervous. ‘But you must