The Forbidden Room
Phoebe Allen
eBook
(@AnnieRoseBooks, July 27, 2015)
NEVER within the memory of middle-aged Libbie, the dairymaid, had there been such a bustle of preparation within the walls of Gaybrook Farm, as on a certain June day, not many summers back.From early dawn—which means somewhere between three and four o’clock—old Mrs. Busson, the farmer’s wife, had been awake and astir.From the lumber-room in the attics, to the parlour, with its high-arched fire-place, filled in to-day with boughs of green and big bowls of June roses, and from the cheese-room, under the roof, to the brew-house in the yard below, every nook and corner in the roomy old farm had been visited, on some pretence or another, by the time that noon and the dinner-hour arrived simultaneously.“And yet,” declared Polly, the rosy-cheeked “odd-girl,” “though the Missus hasn’t been off her feet for all these hours, she’s as fresh as a sky-lark.”“Ay, as brisk as a bee amongst clover,” chimed in old Simon, the shepherd. Leaning against the wall of an outhouse, his dim eyes followed Mrs. Busson’s quick movements as she flitted from dairy to larder, finally disappearing into the garden, as nimbly as though she were seventeen instead of seventy.