Brat Farrar [antikvár]

Chapter One The Ashby family 'Why can't you eat more politely, Jane? Like your sister Ruth!' said Bee across the lunch table. 'She's better at spaghetti than I am, that's all,' said Jane. 'I can't be bothered with things like that.' Her Aunt Bee looked along the table at the twins Jane and Ruth, and smiled. They were almost ten, and were exactly the same, but it was never difficult to tell which was Jane and which was Ruth. Jane always seemed to wear old clothes, clothes for riding horses and for working with them. Ruth, on the other hand, was always in a fresh, clean dress, her hands were never dirty and her hair was always neat and tidy. Eight years, thought Bee. Eight years since the sudden, shocking death of the twins' mother and father, Nora and Bill, in that terrible plane crash! Eight years since she left her life and her job in London to come to Latchetts in order to look after her dead brother's children. And soon she would no longer be responsible for them. The twins' brother, Simon, would be twenty-one in a few weeks' time, and his mother's fortune would be his. The father had not been poor; the Ashby family had lived comfortably at Latchetts for more than two hundred years, but they had never been rich. Latchetts was a small estate of three farms, the park and the house itself. Bill's death had left his sister Bee with many problems as well as those of bringing up his children. Bee had refused to use the money that had belonged to Bill's wife, and had been determined to manage the | ^ estate as a successful business. The money would go to the ^^ oldest son when he was twenty-one and Bee had decided not to touch it. So Latchetts had earned its living as a farm for horses, jj as a school for training horses, as a school for people who j -t i L