Read Online A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley - Free Book Online

thou travel here?”
    I shook my head dolefully. “I can’t tell, I can’t answer,” I muttered.
    â€œYe don’t know?” exclaimed Aunt Tissie, astonished, but not more surprised than myself. “Nay, that beats all. If ye weren’t my own kin I should say ye were simple,” and she clucked her tongue in consternation.
    The kitchen-maids crowded round me and touched my dress with curious fingers. I looked down at my navy serge tunic and the little striped apron I had worn when I was helping Aunt Tissie. It wasn’t I who had changed, but my surroundings, I reminded myself, as they whispered and nodded and pointed at my shoes.
    â€œThey’re mebbe out of the oak chest on the landing,” said one of them, as I stood miserably blushing with the attention I had caused. “There’s a store of ancient clothes for the poor and needy, gear of well-nigh a hundred years in that chest.”
    â€œOr she found ’em in the play-acting chest, where the mistress keeps her garments for mumming-plays and Christmas routs and junketings. Ye might have found something seemlier than that doublet if ye wanted to dress up and surprise us,” said another.
    â€œWhere have ye hidden your ordinary gear?” asked the one whom I had seen the first, who now entered the room. “I found her on the landing, near the mistress’s chamber, and mebbe she’s been inside poking about.”
    â€œNo Aunt,” I cried, and tears sprang to my eyes. “These are my own clothes, and I haven’t any more.”
    â€œWell amercy! Don’t weep, my pretty! I mun make ye some more, for those are not seemly,” said Dame Cicely, and she wiped my eyes with her apron and put her arm about me to shield me from the others. “Tabitha,” she called to the pretty girl who had met me on the stairs. “Take Penelope upstairs to my bedchamber, and put more womanly weeds on her to cover up her long legs. She’s like a lad in that garb. I wouldn’t have the mistress see my niece so.”
    â€œIt’s the dress of a London prentice she’s wearing, and it becomes her. Leave her, Dame Cicely,” said Tabitha. “She’s bonny in them and the mistress won’t mind anything on a day like this. She’ll laugh mebbe, and it will do her good, for, poor soul, she has troubles enow with Master George’s gambling debts and Master Anthony, God bless him, bringing anxieties to this quiet place where nothing’s ever happed since Adam and Eve were on earth.”
    â€œHave it thy own way,” laughed Dame Cicely. “I’ll tell Mistress Babington and Mistress Foljambe that my niece has come from Chelsey to help me, and she’ll be right glad to have ye in the household, and whoever was your mother, ye are a Taberner, and the very image of her who died and is buried out yonder. Ye shall sleep in my bed, for it’s had an empty place since she left us. Phoebe shall make a new smock for ye, and I’ll lend ye a night-rail of mine, although thy little body will be lost in it.”
    She looked me up and down, considering my position in the household.
    â€œNiece Penelope, canst thou sew and cook and milk the kine?” she questioned. “There’s a-plenty of work to be done here, and no room for an idle maid.”
    â€œI don’t sew very well, and I can’t cook,” I confessed.
    â€œMaybe ye’ve been eddicated above thy station?” she said cheerfully. “Canst read and write like the quality?”
    â€œOh yes,” said I.
    â€œThat’s more nor us can do! I can’t read a word, but I keep this household going. I carry my knowledge in my noddle and have no use for printed books. Receipts for cooking, and making of drinks and possets, I know them all. I remember the old ballads and I know the Psalms, so that I can sing without a Psalter. I keep a tally on the doorpost of the number of eggs and