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The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

Chapter 11

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She met the first of them at the gate, brought them in, and went back. She went back five times.The last time, she found an old gentleman in the ditch at the bend—a stout, white-haired man in a velvet coat who had slipped and could not rise. She got her shoulder under his arm, hauled him up out of the snow, and half-carried him to the farm with his arm around her neck, while he apologized to her very politely the whole way.By the time she got him to the door, the kitchen was full. There were forty of them—the county in its best—packed onto the bench, the chairs, and the buckets, with snow melting off their shoulders and steaming by the fire.And the three aunts rose from their places, as calm as if they had been expecting forty people all week."Well," said Dorcas, "we shall want the big pot."Every scrap in the house went into that pot: the Sunday bacon, Mr. Tebbutt's flour, the last of the onions, and the dried beans. And Dorcas stood over it for two hours with her face scarlet from the fire, and fed forty people out of it with bread from the mended oven, hot and brown.Honoria went round with the jug, gave every guest a cup of hot spiced ale, and took nobody's money.And when they had eaten, and the fire was banked up high, Winifred stood by the hearth and sang. She sang a carol that the old gentleman said his mother used to sing to him, and he wept into his handkerchief and did not care who saw.And upon the hill, the great house of Brexwell stood in the snow with every window blazing, and the Duchess in her white satin sat alone at a table laid for forty and ate a piece of Twelfth Cake by herself.
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The Duke Sent Her His 3 Old Aunts for Winter — By Easter His Duchess Begged a Seat at Their Table

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