"Hush," Elizabeth cooed, bouncing the restless toddler on her lap- already, she was pregnant again, so the poor child had little space to sit.
"Give me my nephew," I interjected, reaching my arms out for Felix- named after his Father, as the first son Elizabeth had birthed following a little girl.
Baby Felix came easily enough to me, and settled into place on my lap- I was only a few months along, myself, so he had plenty of room to sit near my knee.
Elizabeth made a face at me, rather envious of how quickly I got her own child to stop crying. "Is the little Tomboy-Amelia a little homemaker, now?"
Beside Elizabeth, her husband burst into laughter as I made a face at the both of them.
"Homemaker," Eli scoffed, still struggling to calm his chuckling. "Boy or girl, any child of Meli's is going to come out throwing punches. She won't have time to keep home, she'll be so busy trying to keep the child from falling out of trees and crafting slingshots to fire at the poor saps down on Maine Street."
Despite myself, I smiled. "Luckily, I have the best help in the world when it comes to handling such matters."
Our eyes all moved to Miss Lancing, who was out in the field with my Robert, laughing along with the children. Robert had hoisted our little whisp of a niece into the air- she was nearing her third birthday now- and Emily and Lottie were buzzing around Miss Lancing like happy little bees.
"I am so glad Lottie has taken so well to the house," I admitted quietly, despite the children being well out of earshot. "I know the school is one of the best, but..."
"But some children simply do not take to boarding," Elizabeth agreed. "It was kind of you to take her in."
I laughed. "How could I not, with how smitten she is with Emily? T'would be a sin to separate the two of them."
Indeed, little Lottie was blending in to our home very well- Robert had torn down all of the old and crumbling factories near the outskirts of England, leaving only one standing.
My Factory. Which he had then had crafted into a grand home- perhaps even grander than the one I had grown up in. With all of the land freed now that the crumbling buildings were gone, trees and flowers were free to grow along the paths that I had grown up traveling with so many other orphaned children.
And now Lottie and Emily were free to travel them, as well. Complete with the tin roof atop the building restored, so we could all listen to the sounds created by the rain throughout most of the year. It was perhaps one of the most lovely parts of living somewhere so prone to showers throughout most of the year.
Across the garden, Lottie and Emily suddenly began to argue over something- likely a game the two of them had been playing. Miss Lancing was quick to separate them, and work to redirect their attention.
Elizabeth shook her head. "Those two already in your care, and yet you are pregnant with a third."
As if on cue, Marie, Elizabeth's oldest, suddenly burst into tears as Lottie plucked a flower that Marie had, apparently, been thinking about looking at. When Miss Lancing shooed Marie away from Lottie when the toddler tried to snatch the flower away, Marie turned and ran towards us in a fit of hysterics.
Fighting off a laugh as Elizabeth reached for her oldest child, I sipped at my tea. "Do not forget that you are pregnant, as well, Elizabeth."
She shook her head in amusement, but still cradled Marie in her arms. She had taken to motherhood exceedingly well, despite her horror when she had first felt Marie moving inside of her.
"Do you feel up for the visit to Mother and Father's house today?" Elizabeth asked as Marie settled down.
I nodded slowly as her eyes met mine.
"Are you certain?" Elizabeth prodded. "It is alright if you do not- I remember how awful my morning sickness was that first pregnancy."
"I think it is getting better now. I have not been so sick in a couple of weeks."
My sister grinned widely, no doubt remembering the way she had all but force-fed me when I refused to eat those first several weeks after we had realized I was pregnant. The bouts of sickness that so often followed meals had been horrid. "Mother will be thrilled to see that you are showing now."
I rolled my eyes, trying to hide how excited I was, myself. Motherhood had always seemed something so... beyond myself. I had never pictured myself as a Mother, just as I had rarely stopped to think of what being a wife may be like.
But now I knew that I quite liked both roles. Lottie and Emily had become even dearer to me than I could have ever imagined- already, this child in my stomach, boy or girl, was as well.
Soon enough, all of the children were gathered. Miss Lancing came at my insistence- after all, Michael and John would be visiting from their countryhome, and even Susanna and Thomas had cleared their busy schedules to make their way to Mother and Father's house for Noontime Tea.
Miss Lancing was a member of the family, so it only made sense that she attend, as well.
With such a big gathering, we were forced to part ways, making the journey through London and to Mother and Father's house in separate carriages. Little Marie was upset at having to get into a carriage with her Mother and Father, wanting to trail after Lottie and Emily as she often did. She so loved to play with the older girls.
But, with some insistence from her Mother, Marie was eventually appeased that she would be seeing us later that day, when we all reached the hill on which the house I had grown up in rested.
Robert rested an arm around my shoulder, his other arm reaching across the carriage to rest on Lottie's leg- a silent warning to stop kicking her feet back and forth, banging against the wood below our feet.
For a few moments, Lottie stopped. But she began again just a few short minutes later, unable to stay still for long.
I felt a bit sorry for her- I understood the struggle all too well. I had been her, once. A life of running freely, if hazardously, among the streets would leave any child restless as they were forced to sit in a carriage for a long ride.
Miss Lancing reached into her pocket, pulling out a bit of thread as she began to show the girls how to play Cat's Cradle. Just as she had once done with Elizabeth and I.
Robert smiled at the girls, and I squeezed his hand. It was strange for me, to see them play so. To see the woman who had raised me now raise children who were, undeniably, my own. Miss Lancing's hair had begun to gray now- a contrast to the stark brown color it had been on the day I had met her so long ago- the very day I had been adopted into the Baldwin household.
But the light in her eyes was still the same.
I felt my smile waver slightly as my eyes made their way to Lottie.
She was playing right alongside Emily, but even now, her hands were clenching and unclenching, her feet bouncing a bit. And every now and then, her eyes would look up, her gaze moving about the carriage as if a stranger would suddenly appear and reach for her.
It was the gaze of a child who had seen too much. Who knew the evils of the world just a little bit too well- it was a gaze that would remain with her for the rest of her life. The shift of her eyes when a man approached her a bit too closely, or the way her hand would clench in preparation of a fight when someone came up from behind her and startled her.
I still had that look in my own eyes. That same anxiety when someone approached me too quickly, the same rush of adrenaline when my old instincts kicked in and told me that I needed to prepare to either fight or run- the instincts that every orphaned rat learned to live by when they had to survive on stolen food.
Indeed, such things would never go away- the reality of Lottie's past- the pain, the abuse, the neglect, the crippling loneliness- those were things she would simply have to learn to live with. Things that I now had learned to live with. Things that Emily would never truly comprehend, despite being Lottie's closest playmate and companion.
But I understood her. I understood the fear in her eyes, even if Lottie herself could not understand it- even if she scolded and despised herself for what seemed to be such a foolish instinct when that life was now behind her.
I would give her a family. An education. A home. All of the things I had not realized I needed at her age, but had undeniably needed desperately. The things that had saved me.
Robert's arm tightened around my shoulder, and I smiled up at him. I needed him, too. "Thank you."
He smiled back at me- the most beautiful smile in the whole world. "For what?"
For saving me. Even when I didn't think I needed it any longer. "Just for being you."
He laughed. "Well thank you for being you."
"And thank me for being me." Emily suddenly piped up.
Lottie grinned and nodded, a few loose curls covering her eyes. "And me for being me- Ow!"
Emily had tightened the string in an attempt to make a new shape, and the thread had tangled tightly around Lottie's fingers.
"Sorry!" Emily apologized, pulling her fingers away and working to untie the newly-made knots that trapped Lottie's hands. Robert pulled his arm away, reaching to help. Miss Lancing sighed and reached for her bag in search of scissors, just in case they were needed.
I looked to Lottie's face again, to see if she was in any pain. But she was smiling, and then a laugh bubbled from her lips as she stared at the string entangling her fingers.
Emily quickly joined in on the laughter, pulling away and leaning back in her seat as the two girls collapsed into hysterics.
Miss Lancing hushed them, chastising Lottie and telling her to hold still when the little girl moved all about as she laughed.
"Lottie- Charlotte! You hold still now- do you want your fingers to be cut off? Then quit that moving while I have the scissors so near to your hand."
Despite the chastising, Lottie and Emily went right on laughing, Lottie waving her entangled hands around as she did so.
"Yes, Lottie!" Emily laughed. "She will cut off your thumbs! Just like Little Suck-A Thumb! 'The door flew open, in he ran. The great, long, red-legg'd scissor man.'"
Lottie joined in, exclaiming the rhyme as well, told to children as a warning to not suck their thumbs. "Oh! Children, see, the tailor's come, And caught out little Suck-A-Thumb!"
"Snip, Snap, Snip, the scissors go! And Conrad cries out- Oh! Oh! Oh! Snip! Snap! Snip, they go so fast. That both his thumbs are off at last!"
Again, the girls fell backwards, the carriage filling with laughter and giggles.
Robert struggled to hide a smirk as Miss Lancing sighed and pulled the scissors away, giving up for the time being. She sent me a pointed look. "Good Lord, they are just like you and Elizabeth were. Do you remember when you tied the poor girl to a tree?"
I laughed. "I had forgotten about that!"
That caught the girls' attention. They finally stilled, Miss Lancing took the opportunity to finally snip Lottie free.
"You tied Aunty Elizabeth to a tree?" Emily asked dubiously.
"I gave her a good lashing for it," Miss Lancing quickly interjected, shooting them both a look. "Don't be getting any ideas, unless you want lashings yourselves. We do not tie people to trees."
Despite the threat, neither girl seemed to heed. They both leaned forward, and Lottie pleaded, "Oh, please tell us!"
Miss Lancing shook her head slightly, and I recognized the look from my own childhood- she was giving up. She would deal with the misbehavior as it came, but knew her words would do little in that moment.
"Well, alright," I agreed, amused. "But you listen to Miss Lancing- don't go off tying each other to trees."
Both girls nodded. "We promise."
"Lottie, uncross your fingers and say it again."
Lottie pouted, but did as I said. "Will you tell us now?"
To my right, I saw Robert lean forward slightly. He had never heard this tale, either.
I smiled. "Alright. Growing up, I shared a room with Aunty Elizabeth. We had one large bed, and we slept side-by-side, just as you girls do now. So we played together all of the time- and got into trouble almost as often..."
Both the girls and my husband were enthralled as I spoke, their eyes never leaving mine. Miss Lancing worked on her knitting, though there was a slight smile on her face- likely as she thought of the tale from her own perspective.
She had been right about one thing, though- that lashing she had dealt me had been good motivation to not do so again.
After that story had been told, the girls begged for another, Then another. And I could not help but notice the light in little Lottie's eyes as she heard the tales- the tales of a little girl who had once been an orphaned beggar, just like her. A little girl who had been adopted into a better life, and who struggled to adapt to the new world she had been presented with, just like her. A little girl who, somehow, against all odds, had grown up and found her own happily ever after.
For perhaps the first time in her life- for just that one, small moment- I watched as the fear, the pain, the memories of hunger faded away from Lottie's gaze. As she looked about her, and took in the family that now surrounded her, the warm carriage that put a cover over her head and kept her safe from any rain or wind or chill.
As she reached over to hold Emily's hand, I watched as real, true hope filled a little girl's eyes for the first time in her life. And I vowed to do all that I could to keep it there.
The End