Beauty raised her head and gently pushed the cold nose and wet tongue away from her face. “You are a silly beast,” said Beauty. “You know you can’t climb down the ladder again yourself. What a good thing you never grew too large to carry.”
Teacosy heard by the tone of Beauty’s voice that she was succeeding in comforting her, whatever those particular words meant; the main thing, from her point of view, was that they did not contain the dreaded word No. She dodged Beauty’s restraining hand, put her paws on Beauty’s arm, and licked her face harder than ever, wagging her tail till her whole body shook. “Your generous sympathy is not all joy, you know,” murmured Beauty through the onslaught.
She was just beginning to think she should go back down and sweep up the fragments and go on with dinner while Lionheart finished her week’s baking when she heard footsteps on the loft ladder. Jeweltongue laid their dented little tea-tray down on the floor beside the mattress—the chipped saucers clattered in the dents, and the cups clattered in the mismatched saucers—sat down next to her sister, and began to rub her back gently. “I’m sorry. We’re enough to try the patience of a saint, and even you’re not a saint, are you? I don’t think I could hear to live with a real saint.”
Beauty gave a soggy little laugh, rolled up on an elbow, and caught her sister’s hand. “Do you ever miss the city? You must think about it—as I do—but do you ever long for it?”
Jeweltongue sat quite still, with an odd, vacant expression on her face. “How strange you should ask that just now. I was only thinking about it this afternoon. Well, not so strange. It’s the weather that does it, isn’t it? The cottage grows very small when it’s too wet to be out of doors. I hadn’t realised how often I took my sewing outdoors, till this year, when I can’t. And the cottage is smaller yet when Lionheart is here too, roaring away.
“I don’t know if I miss it. ... I miss some things. I sometimes think it” I have to wear this ugly brown skirt one more day, I shall go mad. I still remember Mandy, who wore it first; do you remember her? Creeping round all day with eyes the size of dinner plates, waiting for me to say something cross to her. Oh! How many cross things I did say, to be sure! No, I don’t long for that life. But I would like a new skirt,”
“Do you miss the Baron?”
JewelEongue laughed and picked up the teapot to pour. “I miss him least of all. Although I would have enjoyed redecorating his town house. Drink this while it’s hot. Lion-heart has sent you a piece of her shortbread, see? You have to eat it or her feelings will be hurt. She roars because she can’t help herself, you know.”
“I do not,” said Lionheart’s head, appearing through the trapdoor in the loft floor. “I roar because—because—It’ you let Teacosy eat that shortbread, Beauty, I really shall roar. And if you don’t come downstairs soon, I will feed your supper to Lydia.”
It was at the end of the summer that the letter came. Each spring and autumn since they had lived in Rose Cottage, one or two or three of the traders from the convoy that had brought them here stopped in on their journey past, to see how the old man who had once been the wealthiest merchant in the richest city in the country and his three beautiful daughters—with a good deal of joshing about the metamorphosis of the eldest into a son, always accompanied by the promise not to give her away—did in their exile.
The leader of the original convoy seemed to take a proprietorial pleasure in their small successes and always noticed the improvements they had made since last he saw them: brighter eyes, plumper frames, clothing that not only fitted well (Jeweltongue would have nothing less round her) but which bore fewer visible darns and patches, chairs all of whose legs matched, enough butter and butter knives to go round when they had a fifth, or even a sixth, person to tea.
This visit was less cheerful than usual; the weather had been bad all over the country, and the traders suffered for it too. Lionheart, who was the best of the three sisters at pretending high spirits she did not feel, was not there, and Mr Strong was preoccupied. He was in a hurry; the convoy had lost so much time to the weather they were passing right through Longchance with barely a pause. “Mr Brownwag-gon and Mr Baggins send their regards and beg pardon for not coming round,” he said. “But we’ll be returning near here in a few days, before we head south again, and one of us will stop in if there is any reply we can take for you.”
Reply? They glanced at one another, puzzled.
“I am very back to front today,” Mr Strong said, groping in his breast-pocket. “Please forgive me. This rain gets into one’s head and rots the intellect. I would have come anyway to say hello, but as it happens—” and he pulled out an envelope and laid it on the table.
Soon after, he said his good-byes and left them, but the echo of the door closing and the slog of his footsteps had long gone before anyone made a move toward the envelope. Jeweltongue, who had sat next to Mr Strong at tea, and was nearest, said, “It’s addressed to you, Father,” but her hands remained buried in the fabric on her lap. Beauty stood up and collected the tea-things, putting the bread and butter back in the cupboard with elaborate care, setting the dirty plates in the washing-up bowl as if the faintest rattle of crockery would awaken something terrible.
She had finished washing up, tipped the water down the pipe, pumped enough fresh water to refill the kettle and the water-jug, and begun to dry the tea-things and put them away when Jeweltongue abruptly leant forward, jerkily picked the letter up, and dropped it hastily in front of her father, as if she wanted to be rid of it as quickly as possible, as if she wanted to push it as far away from herself as she could, as if it were literally unpleasant to the touch.
Their father dragged his eyes away from the fire—hissing as the rain dripped into the chimney—and took it up. He held it for a long moment and looked back at the fire, as if tempted to toss it into the heart of the small blaze. With a sigh, he bowed his head and broke the seal.
One of his ships, presumed lost at sea, had returned, loaded with fine merchandise, worth a great deal of money. His best clerk—whose wife sent her regards, adding that she still prized her collection of once-silent canaries who now sang chorales finer than the cathedral choir, and whose rehabilitated sphinx was, she and her husband agreed, better than any watchdog they had ever had—had contrived to have the ship impounded till his old master could arrive. But he pleaded that he should come soon, for he himself was only a clerk, and working for a new master, who took a dark view of his new clerk working for another man.