Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

stopped smiling.
    "What on earth am I going to do with her for the day?" she said when she had finished the letter.
    Daddy didn't answer, but frowned and kept reading his paper.
    That was when I suggested visiting the columbarium. I was not entirely certain what a columbarium is, but one has opened at the cemetery, and it sounds grand enough for Grandmother.
    "Good idea, Maude," Mummy said. "If she'll agree."
    Daddy looked up from the Mail. "I would be very surprised if she agreed to see such an unsavory thing."
    "Oh, I don't know," Mummy said. "I think it's rather a clever idea. I'm surprised you don't, given how much you like urns."
    When I heard the word urn, I knew they would argue, so I ran down to the bottom of the garden to tell Lavinia that we might go to the cemetery the next day. Daddy and Mr. Waterhouse have put up ladders so that we can climb the fence more easily, after I sprained my wrist once from falling.
    I am rather frightened of Grandmother. She looks as if she has swallowed a fish bone and can't get it out, and she says things that I would be punished for saying. Today when she arrived she looked at me and said, "Lord, child, you are plain. No one would guess you were Kitty's daughter. Or my granddaughter, for that matter." She always likes to remind everyone that she was a beauty when she was younger.
    We went up to the morning room, and Grandmother said once again that she did not approve of the colors Mummy had done the room in. I rather like them. They remind me of the workman's cafe Jenny sometimes takes me to as a treat, where there is a pot of mustard and a bottle of brown sauce on each table. Perhaps Mummy saw them there and decided to use them in her morning room--though it is hard to imagine Mummy in a workman's cafe, with all the smoke and grease and the men who have not shaved. Mummy has always said she prefers a man with smooth skin like Daddy's.
    Mummy ignored Grandmother's remarks. "Coffee, please, Jenny," she ordered.
    "Not for me," Grandmother said. "Just a cup of hot water and a slice of lemon."
    I stood behind them by the window so that I could look out through the venetian blinds. It was dusty outside, what with all the activity in the street--horses pulling carts loaded with milk, coal, ice, the baker's boy going door to door with his basket of bread, boys bringing letters, maids running errands. Jenny always says she is at war with dust and is losing the battle.
    I liked looking out. When I turned back to the room, where dust floated in a shaft of sunlight, it seemed very still.
    "Why are you lurking back there?" Grandmother said. "Come out so we can see you. Play us something on the piano."
    I looked at Mummy, horrified. She knew I hated playing.
    She was no help. "Go on, Maude," she said. "Play us something from your last lesson."
    I sat down at the piano and wiped my hands on my pinafore. I knew Grandmother would prefer a hymn to Mozart, so I began to play "Abide With Me," which I know Mummy hates. After a few bars Grandmother said, "Gracious, child, that's terrible. Can't you play better than that?"
    I stopped and stared down at the keys; my hands were trembling. I hated Grandmother's visits.
    "Come, now, Mother Coleman, she's nine years old," Mummy at last defended me. "She hasn't been taking lessons for long."
    "A girl needs to learn these things. How's her sewing?"
    "Not good," Mummy answered frankly. "She's inherited that from me. But she reads very well. She's reading Sense and Sensibility, aren't you, Maude?"
    I nodded. "And Through the Looking-Glass again. Daddy and I have been re-creating the chess game from it."
    "Reading," Grandmother said, her fish-bone look even stronger. "That won't get a girl anywhere. It'll just put ideas in her head. Especially rubbish like those Alice books."
    Mummy sat up a little straighter. She read all the time. "What's the matter with a girl having ideas, Mother Coleman?"
    "She won't be satisfied with her life if she has ideas," Grandmother