7 September, 1894 — Cottage, English Countryside
Today Imperatrix Lestrange turned eight years old. She had no visit from her mother or father to commemorate the occasion, but then she never had. Nan made her favorite dinner and gave her a new toy and offered to let her stay up late. She liked the new doll, but she hadn't named it yet. She couldn't get too attached to it; it would have to stay here at the end of the month when she went to Oakshire Hall again. There might be a new doll there, too — her birthday present from Nurse, maybe — but it wouldn't be this doll.
After dinner she walked in the garden and ate candies out of the pockets of her jumper, another present from Nan (Nurse wouldn't give her candies, she didn't think — or there had never been any candies left out for her birthday when she'd come back in previous Octobers). She tried to skip rocks in the pond down the way, and sank most of them. When the light started to fade she returned to the house and decided to draw, a bit unsure of what to do with so much evening free time. Her pencils hadn't been put back properly the last time she'd used them, and now she had to go searching through the corners of the room to retrieve them. Three were still in the case. She found two on the floor by the bed, another under the desk. She reached her hand to the back of her desk drawer, searching for the rest. Her hand brushed against familiar objects, then at the very back of the drawer she knocked loose a piece of paper that seemed to have gotten stuck there. Trash, probably, but before she threw it in the bin she pulled it out and unfolded it to make sure it wasn't something she'd wanted.
She recognized the phrase; it was a lesson she'd had to copy down. The industrious bee and how one ought to be like a bee, lest Satan steal your hands away. Satan was very interested in idle hands, apparently. What was odd, though, was that this wasn't quite her handwriting. It wasn't Nanny's, either. She didn't recognize it. Peri frowned at the scrap of paper for a second. She might have been imagining things... so she decided to test it. She found a blank piece of parchment and copied it over.
Some people might have said it was the same, but she saw the differences. The scrap she'd found had loops in the Os and Rs, where hers did not. The t on theirs started on the downstroke, halfway through the letter instead of working up from the bottom. Someone else had written this. Someone else had sat at her desk and copied lessons. There was nothing so strange about that, maybe — the desk had belonged to some other little girl before it had been hers. It wouldn't have been the first thing in Nanny's cottage to have been purchased secondhand. Still — something struck her as strange about this. The handwriting was so close to hers — it just wasn't, quite.
Nanny knocked at the door. Peri hid the scrap she'd found — the one with the other handwriting — in her jumper pocket amidst the sweets wrappers. Nan said she'd exhausted her supply of stay up late minutes and forced her to prepare for bed. After a chapter of a storybook and a warm bath and a change into her nightgown and a last cleanup of her bedroom and finally a tuck-in and a kiss goodbye, Imperatrix Lestrange had quite forgotten about the mysterious scrap of paper, and the other girl to whom it might have belonged.
After dinner she walked in the garden and ate candies out of the pockets of her jumper, another present from Nan (Nurse wouldn't give her candies, she didn't think — or there had never been any candies left out for her birthday when she'd come back in previous Octobers). She tried to skip rocks in the pond down the way, and sank most of them. When the light started to fade she returned to the house and decided to draw, a bit unsure of what to do with so much evening free time. Her pencils hadn't been put back properly the last time she'd used them, and now she had to go searching through the corners of the room to retrieve them. Three were still in the case. She found two on the floor by the bed, another under the desk. She reached her hand to the back of her desk drawer, searching for the rest. Her hand brushed against familiar objects, then at the very back of the drawer she knocked loose a piece of paper that seemed to have gotten stuck there. Trash, probably, but before she threw it in the bin she pulled it out and unfolded it to make sure it wasn't something she'd wanted.
In works of labour or of skill
I would be busy too:
I would be busy too:
She recognized the phrase; it was a lesson she'd had to copy down. The industrious bee and how one ought to be like a bee, lest Satan steal your hands away. Satan was very interested in idle hands, apparently. What was odd, though, was that this wasn't quite her handwriting. It wasn't Nanny's, either. She didn't recognize it. Peri frowned at the scrap of paper for a second. She might have been imagining things... so she decided to test it. She found a blank piece of parchment and copied it over.
In works of labour or of skill
I would be busy too:
I would be busy too:
Some people might have said it was the same, but she saw the differences. The scrap she'd found had loops in the Os and Rs, where hers did not. The t on theirs started on the downstroke, halfway through the letter instead of working up from the bottom. Someone else had written this. Someone else had sat at her desk and copied lessons. There was nothing so strange about that, maybe — the desk had belonged to some other little girl before it had been hers. It wouldn't have been the first thing in Nanny's cottage to have been purchased secondhand. Still — something struck her as strange about this. The handwriting was so close to hers — it just wasn't, quite.
Nanny knocked at the door. Peri hid the scrap she'd found — the one with the other handwriting — in her jumper pocket amidst the sweets wrappers. Nan said she'd exhausted her supply of stay up late minutes and forced her to prepare for bed. After a chapter of a storybook and a warm bath and a change into her nightgown and a last cleanup of her bedroom and finally a tuck-in and a kiss goodbye, Imperatrix Lestrange had quite forgotten about the mysterious scrap of paper, and the other girl to whom it might have belonged.