Her chair had a padded seat but no arms, and its frail legs tapered to fine round points no bigger than a lipstick tube Edda drew in a great breath, lifted herself and the chair a few inches, and brought the left front leg down on the middle of the snake’s head. The fire tools were on the far side of the hearth, with the oblivious Tufts, Grace, and Kitty in between she’d never reach them. It was still emerging, ready the moment the tip of its tail was free to make a bolt in some unpredictable direction. And the thing kept on coming and coming, seven feet of red-bellied black snake, lethally venomous. A polished black wedge with vibrating tongue-huge for what it was!-followed by a polished black body as thick as a woman’s arm-a black body, yes, but beneath it a red belly.
What fun!īut before Edda could find her voice she actually saw the head, and froze. A big rat! A rat was about to invade Mama’s party! Just an inch more, she thought as she watched the head, then I’ll emit a loud gasp and screech “Rat!” at the top of my voice. There was a hole in the wooden floor to the side of Edda’s chair, the last in the row of four a movement inside it caught her attention and she stiffened, grinning deep within herself. Less than a week to go, less than a week to go! Edda kept saying to herself as she endured the embarrassment of being on display, her eyes roaming about because she preferred not to look at her stepmother, Maude, dominating the talk as usual, natter, natter, natter. The very large drawing room was filled with chattering women invited by the Rector’s wife, Maude, to celebrate the event looming in less than a week: the Rector’s four daughters were quitting the Rectory to commence training as nurses at the Corunda Base Hospital. They were sitting on four slender chairs in front of the vast maw of the fireplace, where no fire burned. Mark’s Church of England in the Shire & City of Corunda, New South Wales.
Two sets of twins, the daughters of the Reverend Thomas Latimer, Rector of St.
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