“How very charming,” Elizabeth said without any apparent irony.
“Is that theblindgirl I have heard about?” Portia asked of no one in particular. “She is spoiling the dance for the others. And she is making a spectacle of herself, poor girl.”
Lily was simply laughing. She clapped her hands in time to the music.
And then several of the girls noticed the new arrivals and the dance came to an end as they all stopped and stared and then bobbed curtsies.
Lizzie clutched Miss Martin’s skirt.
“Maypole dancing in July?” Lily cried. “But why not? What a grand idea.”
“It was Agnes’s idea,” Miss Martin explained, “instead of the ball game we were going to play. It was her way of including Lizzie Pickford, who has joined us for the summer holiday.”
Her eyes met Joseph’s briefly.
“Lizzie has been able to hold on to the ribbon,” she continued, “and dance in a circle with everyone else without colliding with anyone or getting lost.”
“She ought to be taught the proper steps, then,” Portia said, “so that she may look more graceful.”
“I thought she was doing remarkably well,” Elizabeth said.
“So did I,” Joseph said.
Lizzie cocked her head and her face lit up, and he almost wished that she would cry out his name and reach out her arms to him and put an end to this distasteful charade.
But then she smiled and raised her face to Miss Martin, a look of gleeful mischief there. Miss Martin set an arm about her shoulders.
“Do carry on,” Elizabeth said. “We did not mean to disturb you.”
Some of the younger children, Joseph could see—not the schoolgirls—were tackling Hallmere on the grass and shrieking with delight. Lady Hallmere was egging them on. The dog, tethered to a tree close to the maypole, was sitting and placidly watching, his tail thumping on the grass. The duchess was hurrying toward them from a distant cluster of infants.
“I believe we are all out of breath,” Miss Martin said. “It is time for something less strenuous.”
“Ball?” one of the older girls suggested.
Miss Martin groaned, but the lady Joseph recognized as Miss Thompson, the teacher who had appeared outside the school in Bath, had come up with the duchess.
“I will supervise a game for anyone who wants to play,” she said.
“Horace has a new collar and leash,” Lizzie announced loudly. “I hold on and he takes me about and I don’t run into things or fall down.”
“How very clever, dear,” Elizabeth said kindly. “Perhaps you could show us.”
“That child,” Portia said sotto voce to Joseph, “ought to learn to speak when she is spoken to. Blindness is surely no excuse for bad manners.”
“But perhaps childish exuberance is,” he said, watching as Lizzie turned and groped with one hand until Miss Martin untied the dog and set the loop of the leather leash in her hand. It took all his willpower not to rush forward to help.
“I will come walking with you if you wish, Lizzie,” a girl about her own age said, taking her free hand.
Lizzie looked in his general direction.
“Would you like to come too…sir?” she asked.
“Well, really!” Portia exclaimed. “What impudence.”
“I would be delighted,” he said. “Miss…Pickford, is it?”
“Yes.” She laughed with glee.
