Summoning a smile, she headed over to the desk. “That was quick, Maisie. Let’s have a look, then, shall we?”
Maisie handed over her notebook, gnawing on her lip all the while.
Polly scanned the page. Her smile deepened as she inspected the rows of cursive, which were painstakingly tidy and precise. “What beautiful penmanship, Maisie,” she said warmly.
The girl flushed to the roots of her shiny brown plaits. “Thank you, Miss Kent. I’ve been practicing. Like you told me, ‘If at first you don’t succeed…”
“…try and try again.’ That was my papa’s favorite saying,” Polly said with a reminiscent smile. “As a scholar and schoolmaster, he said his work never got any easier—he merely got more used to trying. Well, your efforts have certainly paid off, Maisie. I’m very impressed, and Mrs. Hunt will be as well at your remarkable progress.”
“Do you think so?” Pleasure warmed the girl’s glow.
Like all of the foundlings, Maisie Cullen adored the school’s benefactress, Persephone Hunt. The academy had been established by Mrs. Hunt’s husband, Gavin Hunt, a powerful and affluent businessman. A product of the stews, Mr. Hunt aimed to give the children of the rookery opportunities that he, himself, had lacked. The Hunts were long-time friends of the Kents, and it had been Mrs. Hunt who’d first suggested that Polly might enjoy volunteering at the academy.
“What will I be impressed by?” The lady in question approached, a questioning smile on her heart-shaped face. Mrs. Hunt’s slender figure was clad in a sky blue walking dress that matched her eyes, her upswept golden curls bouncing with each step. Her loveliness was more than skin-deep: she glowed with the vitality of her spirit.
“Maisie completed her lesson.” Polly showed Mrs. Hunt the page.
“Well done, Maisie!” Mrs. Hunt said. “We shall celebrate with cake at lunch, shall we?”
Maisie turned even pinker. “Miss Kent’s been ’elping me with myq’s.”
“Then Miss Kent shall have some cake too,” Mrs. Hunt declared. “Now, run along, Maisie, and get some fresh air before the lunch bell rings. You’ve earned it.”
The girl bobbed a curtsy and scampered off, plaits flying.
“She has bloomed, hasn’t she?” Mrs. Hunt said with satisfaction.
“Indeed,” Polly said fondly.
She could still remember when Maisie had arrived at the school a year ago, a malnourished ten-year-old dressed in rags. Unlike London’s Foundling Hospital, the Hunt Academy took in children of all ages and regardless of the circumstances that had forced them to seek refuge. Maisie and her older brother, Timothy, had been abandoned by their mother, a prostitute whose addiction to blue ruin had taken away her ability to care for her offspring.
“Now if only Tim would set roots down here as well,” Mrs. Hunt murmured.
While Maisie had adapted to her new home, her brother, unfortunately, had not. At fifteen, Tim was a wild and unruly boy who ran with a band of mudlarks, children who scavenged the banks of the Thames collecting anything of value. Given the desperation of their situation, mudlarks who managed to survive into adulthood oft found themselves apprenticed into the world of thieves and cutthroats. Only Tim’s love for his sister kept him coming to the academy for visits and, Polly suspected, from succumbing to the darkness of the rookery once and for all.
“I wish there was some way to convince him,” she said.
“One can only bring a horse to water,” Mrs. Hunt said with a sigh. “But enough of that. I have something to show you in my office if you’re free?”
Polly nodded. She had an hour before she was to meet Rosie around the corner from the school. They’d chosen that time because the children would be transitioning from lunch to recess; in the hullabaloo, no one would notice Polly’s absence.
Polly followed the other out of the classroom. Occupying a large plot on the boundary between the stews and Covent Garden, the academy had once been a warehouse for spices, and the barest traces of cinnamon and saffron still tinged the air. The Hunts had redesigned the cavernous space, adding windows and walls to create large, bright rooms that branched off the arterial hallway.
As Polly kept pace with Mrs. Hunt’s lively stride, she glimpsed children learning various trades in those rooms, everything from shoemaking to sewing to cookery. The Academy’s unique philosophy was to provide students not only with food and shelter, but with the tools—including literacy—with which they could build successful lives.
“You’ve made quite an impression on Maisie,” Mrs. Hunt said.
“And vice versa. She’s a bright and capable girl.”
It was one of the reasons Polly loved working at the academy. The students had so much potential—and at the same time, little in the way of conceit. Because of their humble beginnings, the children knew the pain of living on society’s fringes, and their auras shone with hope and determination to make better lives for themselves.
“She was in dire need of a mentor and friend. Maisie talks about you all the time. How you’ve helped her with her letters and her sewing.”
“She’s a prodigy with a needle. Even Madame Rousseau is impressed,” Polly said with a smile. Through their circle of influence, the Hunts had been able to recruit experts to apprentice the children. Madame Rousseau, the famed and long-time modiste of the Kents, had taken Maisie and several girls under her tutelage. “I’ve hardly done anything.”
Mrs. Hunt sent her a quizzical look. “You do know Maisie adores you, don’t you? As do all of the children you’ve worked with.”
“I think it is you whom they admire, Mrs. Hunt.”
