Hope [antikvár]

Chapter One Somerset, iSji 'Screaming don't help babbies into this world!' Bridie snapped irritably, and forced the rope knotted to the bedhead into her mistress's hands. 'Jest pull on this and bear down.' At the sound of the door opening behind her, she glanced over her shoulder to see Nell, the parlourmaid, coming in with a basin of hot water. 'About time too! I thought you'd skedaddled,' she barked. Nell was not offended by old Bridie's sharpness; she understood it was only because she was frightened. Bridie was not a midwife and it was only the horror of Lady Harvey being put to public shame that had induced her to deliver this baby herself She looked all of her sixty years now, with her iron-grey hair escaping from her starched cap, her plump face drawn and yellowy in the candlelight, and her blue eyes, which normally twinkled with merriment, dull with exhaustion and anxiety. 'Maybe we should get the doctor?' NeU blurted out as she saw the angry distended veins which had popped up all over Lady Harvey's face and neck. 'It's surely taking too long and she's in such pain.' Bridie glared, and NeU took that to mean she was not to offer any further opinions or suggestions. So she took the rag from the cold-water basin, wrung it out and wiped her