She would be sacked for sure and probably sent back to the orphanage and locked up there till she was fourteen. Then they’d send her down a mine or something—Rose couldn’t help but agree. It was the only way. “Drat that Sparrow woman,” Gus said, as they crept along the corridors. “If it weren’t for her, we could ask the master, but when I spoke to him this morning, he didn’t listen to a word I said. And he did no work this afternoon. Not a scrap of magic. He just stared out the window, smiling,” he added sadly. Rose frowned, remembering her first meeting with Mr. Fountain, those glinting, all-seeing blue eyes. She couldn’t imagine him gazing foolishly out a window. “Tomorrow, as soon as Susan is asleep, then,” Freddie warned Rose, as they parted by the servants’ stairs. She nodded and climbed wearily back up to her room. The work of the house wasn’t harder than the orphanage, after all, but she was getting considerably less sleep.
