21 and I wish you could’ve enjoyed it here with us. Thank you for your house. May you rest in peace. “You know these attics would have been servants’ quarters once,” Mum explained when we were fixing them up. The smallest room at the end became Mum’s study, and we got to turn the other two into a gym and a rumpus room. I can’t imagine people living up here. The attic rooms were quite cozy by the time we had fixed them up, but Mum reckoned quite a few people would have lived in them once: a housekeeper, a cook, a butler, a footman, and a scullery maid. She was proven right, when we decided to turn one of the rooms into a gym and we discovered that some of the floorboards were rotten. Mum and Dad got a man in to rip them up and put in a new floor. When he pulled away the rotting bits of wood, we found a little lacy dress which looked as though it was over a hundred years old. It had a frilly collar and rosebuds all over it, and little covered buttons down the front and on the sleeves. On the back was the dark brown print of an iron. Mum was very excited when she saw that. “Now, there’s a story!” she exclaimed, holding the damaged dress up to us. “You know what must have happened, don’t you? Some poor housemaid must have been doing the ironing long, long ago and accidentally burned the dress. She must have been so frightened that she hid it under the floorboards of her room, hoping no one would notice it was missing. And now we’ve found it.” “I won’t tell,” promised Xavier, who seemed to think the housemaid was still living in the attic somewhere. When we were finally able to move into the house properly,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzMzNzY=