The Misplaced

C h a p t e r ° 5

Dedicated to @Leeleekez

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5 | THE TERRIBLE MISCONCEPTION

11th October, 1905.

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IT'S BEEN A MONTH SINCE the morose and agonizing departure of Mr. Barnes, and two weeks since Emma gained employment into the bourgeois household of the Lowes.

It took a lot of chutzpah for her mother to try and persuade her mistress, Mrs. Lowe, to hire Emma as a maid in the three-storey house. And after a week of the proffered proposal, Emma was fortunately hired.

Emma was cock-a-hoop about her new employment at the Lowe's home, though the work was tedious, and demanded great competency and punctuality. The Lowes had been quite amicable towards her, albeit the young master, Mr. David, a gentleman four years Richard's senior, has been throwing amorous advances at her whenever he got the chance to, which was quite upsettling.

Emma had once broached on the subject to her mother, but her mother had quickly dismissed the subject with a grunt and a jerky wave of her hand, and she had grown never to grouse about it, and tried to be invincible as possible.

It was a fine autumn morning, and Emma was trekking back from the mercantile whence she had been sent by Mrs. Grey, the housekeeper, to purchase some food items for the Lowe's luncheon, and after which she had dropped by at Mrs. Corbett's boutique for a brief chin-wagging with Maggie, and to sneak glances at Mr. Patrick from across the bustling street whilst he work.

Mr. Patrick had progressed from being Maggie's surreptitious crush to her lover, for both of them were now in a clandestine affair, and are very assiduous in it. Emma didn't query or reprimand, for both were nothing but adults and were old enough to make choices. But he was very sweet towards her sister and she liked him for that.

The heels of her boots scraped at a steady unhurried pace across the pavement, and Emma tugged at her tweed coat, for it was quite chilly and blustery.

The frill and fussy lace bib apron affixed over her light print and plainly made gown jiggled from the vibration of her humming, and her woebegone ringlets that escaped from her white cap, tickled against her cheekbones and behind her slender neck as the bitter wind swept northwards, and ruffled at the fallen auburn leaves of spare trees on the grubby ground at midair.

The street to the Lowes home was quite modernized, and the settlement were of marble buildings and verdant gardens.

The three-storey, modishly designed house of the Lowes emerged into Emma's periphery vision, and her pace quickened. She loathed whenever the Lowe's butler, Mr. Hood, chastises her for her frivolity, cause the old fellow was always by the sitting room's bay window, armed with the discarded copies of Mr. Lowe's special newspaper, THE TIMES, and would sometimes spy at her specially when she was being lackadaisical.

With a sigh of exhaustion, Emma made a bee line around from the unlatched wrought-iron gate that led to the shining white doorstep and with the double doors modelling a well-polished brass door handle, towards the graveled courtyard to the servants entrance.

Quite a handful of chickens were wandering around by the stableyard grubbing the ground for worms as Emma led herself into the house. Mrs. Grey, a middle-aged, plump lady with no very outstanding characteristics, very plain, with charcoal hair hidden beneath a white cap and a steady pewter hued eyes was furiously chopping at some vegetables when she marched into the fairly wide kitchen with a basket of delivery.