Victoria and the Nightingale by Susan Barrie Page A

background silence of the big house set in its stately park and grounds, she was merely mildly excited, as if she was setting out on a grand but possibly formidable adventure.
    The next day she planned to take Johnny away. She would rise early, get him dressed—although unfortunately it would be impossible to feed him at that early hour—and without disturbing anyone they would steal away, much as they had come, and throw themselves upon the mercy of the world. By degrees they would return to London, and once there a bed-sitting room would solve their immediate problems. The welfare center where she had worked before might help her to care for Johnny ... at least while she was working. She supposed she ought to keep in touch with the lawyer who was handling the microscopic estate—and the debts—that Johnny’s father had left to the world. There would be nothing very much for Johnny, but at least she must keep in touch.
    That much she owed to Johnny.
    She found it impossible to sleep as the hours crawled by. At two o’clock she got up and started putting together her few possessions ... things she had collected while she was at Wycherley Park. And these did not include garments that had been made over to her by Miss Islesworth. These she returned to the drawers and the wardrobe, where Miss Islesworth could find them later.
    At three o’clock she crept into Johnny’s room and performed the-same service for him. She took the utmost care to avoid waking him, then returned to her own room and sat watching by the window until the first very faint light of dawn appeared in the sky. Then she went back to Johnny’s room and wakened him.
    It was difficult making the child understand that a good deal was expected of him. He wanted to go on slumbering contentedly in his bed, and Victoria couldn’t allow that, so she had to give him a gentle shake occasionally.
    At last she succeeded in getting him dressed, and then she had to make him understand that neither of them must make any sound. She had left a note propped up on the writing desk in her room for Sir Peter Wycherley, and in it she had thanked him for all his goodness and kindness, but made no mention of where she was going, or where she was taking Johnny. After all, or so she argued with herself, it was really no concern of his. And the relief of his fiancee when she discovered that they had gone would be incalculable.
    So why did she have to let Sir Peter know where she was going?
    Once they had gone—she and Johnny—he could forget them. He need never again devote a moment’s thought to them, and that would completely satisfy Georgina Islesworth—Georgie as Sir Peter called her.
    But Victoria always thought of her as Miss Islesworth, and under no circumstances could she ever think of her as Georgie.
    Half way down the main staircase Johnny stumbled, and Victoria had to grab him quickly to prevent him from falling. The main hall was like a pool of silence, thick with shadows and glowing with the odd splashes of color created by massed flowers in copper and bronze containers. The smell of flowers and opulence lay heavily on the hushed morning atmosphere, and outside the great hall window the eastern sky flamed with cerise and banners of flamingo pink. Victoria had decided beforehand that it would be no use trying to open the great front door, for only the butler knew how to deal with the ponderous bolts and locks. Miss Islesworth was a nervous sleeper, and she liked to think that when she went to bed at night there was no danger of her repose being interrupted by housebreakers. Therefore one of the side doors— and there were quite a number of them opening on to the outside world—would have to provide them with their means of exit.
    Victoria had such a strange, panic-stricken feeling that someone, or something, would prevent them getting away, and this feeling made her fingers fumble when she fought with the locks of one of the side doors—the first that they came