House with the Twisting Passage

MP3 Audio CD. Chapter 2

Jenny's Miss Clare

The following day Jenny had another game with Miss Clare and began to feel as if she had known her all her life. She was absorbed with this new playmate of hers and ran past Miss Ruby's door and Mr. Snatcher's door without giving either of them a thought. Then Jenny made one or two discoveries about Miss Clare which made her seem more real than ever. One afternoon when aunt Abby had gone to sleep on the sofa, Jenny crept upstairs and against the rules searched the upper floors until she found the old nursery at the top. And here after much quiet rummaging about she found in a cupboard the doll. Actually the same doll that Miss Clare was holding in her arms in the picture. To make quite sure Jenny carried it carefully down into the passage and compared it with the pictured doll. Yes it was the same no doubt about it, though it looked older and more knocked about than the one Miss Clare was holding. Jenny gazed down into the dolls staring eyes and thought they looked pathetic and lonely. So after this she would often creep away when aunt Abby was not looking and still into the old nursery and use the doll for a few minutes and talk to it saying that Miss Clare hadn't forgotten it and would come home again.

Soon hidden away in the nursery, she also found a pair of Miss Clare's little black slippers. They were too small for Jenny, she knew because she tried to put them on. Another discovery was a torn exercise book with Miss Clare's name on the cover written in large straggling handwriting and this disclosed to Jenny the secret that Miss Clare couldn't add up very well and didn't know what nine times six was which made her all the more dear to Jenny's heart. And so Jenny dreamed and weaved stories about her Miss Clare inventing all sorts of things about her manners and likes and dislikes until she really felt she knew Miss Clare as well as she knew herself.