A Christmas Promise - Anne Perry [1]
Gracie was exasperated. The whole story made no sense. Why would Minnie Maude be worrying about a donkey that had wandered off, if her uncle had really been killed? And yet she couldn’t just leave the girl there standing on the corner in the wind. It would be dark very soon. It was after three already, and going to rain. “Yer got a ma?” Gracie asked.
“No,” Minnie Maude answered. “I got an aunt Bertha, but she says as Charlie don’t matter. Donkeys is donkeys.”
“Well, if yer uncle got killed, maybe she don’t care that much about donkeys right now.” Gracie tried to sound reasonable. “Wot’s gonna ’appen to ’er, wif ’im gone? Yer gotta think as she might be scared an’ all.”
Minnie Maude blinked. “Uncle Alf di’n’t matter to ’er like that,” she explained. “’e were me pa’s bruvver.” She sniffed harder. “Uncle Alf told good stories. ’e’d bin ter places, an’ ’e saw things better than most folk. Saw them fer real, wot they meant inside, not just wot’s plain. ’e used ter make me laugh.”
Gracie felt a sudden, sharp sense of the girl’s loss. Maybe it was Uncle Alf she was really looking for, and Charlie was just an excuse, a kind of sideways way of seeing it, until she could bear to look at it straight. There was something very special about people who made you laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. It had been a little while before she had really said to herself that her mother wasn’t ever coming back.
“’e were killed,” Minnie Maude repeated. “Yest’day.”
“Then yer’d best go ’ome,” Gracie pointed out. “Yer aunt’ll be wond’rin’ wot ’appened to yer. Mebbe Charlie’s already got ’ome ’isself.”
Minnie Maude looked miserable and defiant, shivering in the wind and almost at the end of her strength. “No ’e won’t. If ’e knew ’ow ter come ’ome ’e’d a bin there last night. ’e’s cold an’ scared, an’ all by ’isself. An’ no one but ’im an’ me knows as Uncle Alf were done in. Aunt Bertha says as ’e fell off an’ ’it ’is ’ead, broke ’is neck most like. An’ Stan says it don’t matter anyway, cos dead is dead jus’ the same, an’ we gotta bury ’im decent, an’ get on wi’ things. Ain’t no time ter sit around. Stan drives an ’ansom, ’e goes all over the place, but ’e don’t know as much as Uncle Alf did. ’e could fall over summink wifout seein’ it proper. ’e sees wot it is, like Uncle Alf said, but ’e don’t never see wot it could be! ’e di’n’t see as donkeys can be as good as a proper ’orse.”
Not for a hansom cab, Gracie thought. Who ever saw a hansom with a donkey in the shafts? But she didn’t say so.
“An’ Aunt Bertha di’n’t ’old wif animals,” Minnie Maude finished. “’ceptin’ cats, cos they get the mice.” She gulped and wiped her nose on her sleeve again. “So will yer ’elp me look for Charlie, please?”
Gracie felt useless. Why couldn’t she have come a little earlier, when her gran had first told her to? Then she wouldn’t even have been here for this child to ask her for something completely impossible. She felt sad and guilty, but there was no possible way she could go off around the wet winter streets in the dark, looking for donkeys. She had to get home with the potatoes so her gran could make supper for them, and the two hungry little boys Gran’s son had left when he’d died. They were nearly old enough to get out and earn their own way, but right now they were still a considerable responsibility, especially with Gracie’s gran earning only what she could doing laundry every hour she was awake, and a few when she hardly was. Gracie helped with errands. She always seemed to be running around fetching or carrying something, cleaning, sweeping, scrubbing. But very soon she would have to go to the factory like other girls, as soon as Spike and Finn didn’t need watching.
“I can’t,” she said quietly. “I gotta go ’ome with the taters, or them kids’ll start eatin’ the chairs. Then I gotta ’elp me gran.” She wanted to apologize, but what was the point? The answer was still no.
Minnie Maude nodded,