I spun around on my heel, almost smashing into the door frame as I turned, coming face to face with the small girl from the photograph. Her dark hair was pulled off her face with a pale blue ribbon and she was wearing a dress of a similar colour with a white sash wrapped around her waist. She looked at me, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, a small teddy bear clutched in one hand, held tightly against her chest as though she didn't know what to make of me. I took a breath, smoothing out the apron that was tied around my waist before I spoke.

"My name's Rosie, I'm the new servant," I said.

"Oh, okay," she said before turning around and walking in the opposite direction. I tilted my head to the side and watched Charlotte walk down the hall and disappear down a flight of stairs.

Laughing to myself slightly, I continued back down the hall and heading in the other direction, checking rooms as I went. Each room was neat and organised, as though no one really lived there, and the rooms had been decorated for show rather than anything else. I found Esther in the last room, straightening out a blanket that had been folded up on the bottom of a four-poster bed. She was surrounded by an assortment of stuffed toys and other wooden objects scattered around the room in various piles. The bookshelves on the wall were covered in other wooden toys lying in heaps or dangling off the edge. Whatever Esther and Charlotte had been doing all day, it had created a mess.

"Oh, Rosie, what can I help you with?" Esther asked, glancing up and noticing me standing in the doorway.

"Miss Jenkins is looking for you, she wants you to set the table for luncheon. I don't think I'm trusted to do it in case I drop something," I said.

"I heard Miss Matilda telling her mother about what happened earlier on, I'm sure it will be fine,"

"Mrs Ealing says it shouldn't be an issue, but it's only day one, anything could happen."

"It will all be fine, Rosie, trust me." Esther paused. "Could you finish cleaning up here? If Miss Jenkins wants me, I won't have time to put all of the toys away."

"Of course, I can."

"Great. Just put the stuffed toys on the bed and the others in the corner over there, they won't stay there for too long anyway."

"Okay."

"Thank you so much. I'll see you later on."

Esther placed her hand on my shoulder as she left, sending me a reassuring smile as she slipped through the door and out into the hallway to carry out Miss Jenkins task. I looked around the room, taking in the mess that was around me, it looked a lot bigger when I was the one who had to clean it. I had no idea what Charlotte and Esther had been doing all day to get into that state, but I certainly wasn't one to ask questions, especially as it kept Charlotte out of the way. It was better for her to create a mess in her own room rather than throughout the entire house, one room was easy enough to clean, the whole house not so much.

Sighing, I set about following in Esther's footsteps and rearranging the room as best I could. I had never seen a child's room full of so many things before and finding places to put them all to keep them out of the way was difficult. First, I finished straitening the blankets on the bed before placing the stuffed animals onto the bed itself, arranging them to from largest to smallest. By the time all of the stuffed animals were on the bed, the pillows had completely disappeared amongst a sea of animals. When I was a child, I had a singular stuffed bunny rabbit, about the size of a tea-cup which I called Emily, after my mother. After I was sold to Mr Thompson, the rabbit remained with my family. On some of the coldest nights at the factory, I dreamed that I could have her back, but I couldn't.

After I had sorted out the bed, my eyes lingering on a small rabbit that was so similar to my own, I began to rearrange the rest of the wooden toys, stacking them in the far corner. I pushed the little wooden trains back and the small building blocks were stacked up in a tower, kept out of the way and off the main floor. As I cleaned, I found that my eyes kept glancing back towards the small rabbit, surprised by how similar it was the to the one I had. They could have been made in the same place, though it was unlikely seeing how cheap mine would have been compared to Charlotte's.

"What are you doing?" the same voice from early asked.

"Esther asked me to finish cleaning your room, I was just about to start on your shelves," I said, turning around to face Charlotte.

"Humph, I don't like people touching my things!"

"I was just putting them away, that's all. We wouldn't you to hurt yourself, would we?"

"You keep looking at my bunny."

"I used to have one just like it, that's all," I said as I started to rearrange the toys on the shelves, straightening them up and making sure they weren't going to topple onto the floor.

"What happened to it?"

"I don't know."

Charlotte didn't reply, instead, she glanced around the room and I saw that her eyes lingered on the bunny just as much as mine had done before. I continued my work, moving from the toys on the shelf to a stack of hardback books stacked one-atop another on a set of drawers. Whilst Charlotte shuffled around the room and inspected my work, I set about correcting the books and straightening them up, so they looked neat and orderly, like the rest of the room. Once I had finished the shelving, I took one last glance around the room, noticing that Charlotte had picked up the bunny and was now stroking its head, occasionally glancing at me as though I was going to take it.

Pleased that I had finished the task Esther had set me, I left Charlotte alone to stare at the toy and headed back down to the kitchen, surprised to find it devoid of either Miss Jenkins or Esther. With no other tasks to handle, I took a seat at the table in the middle of the room, a little surprised that it was empty and not being weighed down by an assortment of foods or dishes that hadn't been washed yet. The silence that descended on the room was almost deafening and a little unnerving. Silence was not something I was used to, after being surrounded by people for most of my life and dealing with the sounds of the machines on a regular basis, silence was not something I was used to surrounding me.

I stretched my left hand out in front of me, examining the blisters and red skin that had already started to cause me issues despite only being a few days old. The burn paste that I had smeared on that morning had rubbed off, leaving the skin red compared to the white it had been that morning. My fingers were still stiff and moving them, even slightly, was extremely painful but moving them was all I could to stop them seizing up completely. Sighing, I pushed myself up from the table and left the room, heading up the bedroom.

When I reached the room, I was a little surprised to not find Esther lurking around, it looked as though both her and Miss Jenkins had vanished into thin air. Shaking my head at the insane notion, I crossed the room and grabbed the jar off paste of the drawers, unscrewing the lid and scooping up a blob of the thick substance. I lightly smeared the paste onto the burned skin, feeling a cooling sensation spread over the warm skin as the paste made contact. It was strangely soothing, the coldness of the paste extinguishing the fire that felt as though it would never burn out.

Once the skin had once again turned from red to a pale pink colour, I replaced the lid and put the jar back on the drawers before heading back down to the kitchen, hoping someone had reappeared and could tell me what I was supposed to do next. It was strange, I was so used to routine, to doing the same thing over and over again that having moments of uncertainty left me clueless as to what to do. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, the low hum of voices came from the kitchen, alerting me to the presence of Miss Jenkins and Esther. Smiling to myself, I walked into the kitchen and waited for my next task.

"Right, Rosie, I know you're not a big fan of Miss Matilda, nor her you, but Esther is going to help me prepare supper and I don't trust you with a knife, not yet. So, could you please go and collect Miss Matilda's tea tray?" Miss Jenkins said when she spotted me in the doorway.

"What if I drop it?" I asked, flexing my fingers behind my back without thinking.

"You were able to carry the tray to the room without dropping it, I'm sure you can pick it up. If you're worried about Miss Matilda, she and her mother have gone to see a dressmaker in London, so she won't be around."

"Okay, I'll go and get the tray then," I muttered.

"Once you've done that, you can get the one from Master Robert's room, sometimes he brings them down, but today he has not."

"Very well."

Turning on my heel, I left the two of them to start making supper for the family whilst I once again made the climb up the stairs to the rooms I appeared to have spent most of my first day near. Echoes of their voices travelled from the kitchen up the stairs until I stepped out onto the hallway and they disappeared completely. Sighing, I leant my back against the wall next to the door, taking a moment to breathe before I had to face anyone else. Not being trusted to do anything other than collect things was affecting me more then I thought it would. I felt as though I was intruding on the relationship they had already built.

I shook the thought from my head, putting it down to exhaustion before I set about with the task Miss Jenkins had set for me, returning the room I had been in only a few hours before. It felt as though the day was dragging on, as though it was a never-ending cycle of walking the same corridor. Knowing Matilda wasn't in her room, I found myself knocking on the door anyway, pushing it open slightly to confirm what Miss Jenkins had already told me. I slipped into the room and followed the same path I had taken that morning, retrieving the tea tray from the side table. The table Matilda had been standing by that morning was covered in an assortment of hairpins, brushes and pieces of ribbon.

Not wanting to leave the room in disarray, I put the tea tray back on the side table and set about organising Matilda's table. I moved all of the hairpins into a pile on the left side of the desk, seeing the brushes done next to them in a long line so they were easy to find when she needed them. The ribbons were a little harder to control. Using some clothes pins I also found on the desk, I rolled the ribbons up and used the pins to stop them unwinding. Whether or not Matilda would appreciate me making her table easier to use did not bother me too much, but I hoped that it would be step one in her starting to like me, even it is only a little bit.

I grabbed the handles of tea tray again and carried it from the room and out into the hallway, almost dropping it when I came face to face with Charlotte. She was standing in a small patch of sunlight just outside the room, the teddy she was holding onto earlier was still clasped against her chest but her other hand held another, smaller toy that I couldn't quite place. I didn't know how long she had been standing there for, the way she had approached the room so silently was a little alarming. It made me wonder how often she snuck around the house scaring people, I certainly wasn't going to enjoy seeing her appear out of nowhere when carrying a heavy object.

"Miss Charlotte! You scared me," I exclaimed, tightening my grip on the handle of the tray so I didn't drop it.

"Sorry, 'Tilda keeps telling me off for sneaking around, but I don't do it on purpose!" she replied, dragging the word 'purpose' out.

"Just try not to do it when I'm carrying something, I wouldn't want to get into trouble for dropping it."

"I have something for you."

"Me? Why?"

"You said my bunny was like one you had, but you lost it. I thought you could have mine!" She pulled the small rabbit I had been looking at earlier from under her arm and showed it to me.

"I'm not going to take a toy from you, Miss Charlotte."

"But I want you to have it! I thought it could make your arm feel better, my teddies always make me feel better when I'm unwell or hurt."

"How about this, you look after the bunny for me and make sure it's safe, I'll be working most of the time, so I won't be able to look after it, but you can. What do you think?"

"I like that idea. I'll keep it safe for you. You can come and see it whenever you want!"

"I might take you up on that, Miss."

Charlotte grinned at me and took off down the corridor, swinging the little rabbit as she moved. I had never met a child as enthusiastic as Charlotte and the way she acted with the bunny made me question how she could be related to Matilda. She had offered me, someone she had never met until this morning, her own toy, as though I was a friend, someone she had known for years. Matilda may have been hostile, but Charlotte was a friend. Almost the entire Ealing family had accepted me as the new servant despite my trial only just beginning, I had hopes it was a sign of things to come.

With Charlotte having officially left me to get on with my chores, I did as instructed and took Matilda's tea tray to the kitchen. Miss Jenkins and Esther were so involved in their conversation that they didn't even acknowledge me or the tea tray, they just continued making supper and talking as though I wasn't even there. I left them to it and headed back upstairs to get Robert's tea tray, hoping I didn't get another sneak attack from Charlotte in the process. Once again, I knocked at Robert's door and when I received no reply, I pushed the door open and slipped in. The tea tray I had put in there that morning had moved across the room, the teapot and mug having been left in various places in the room.

I gathered up the items and placed them back on the tea tray, exactly as Esther had shown me when the tray was originally put together. The teapot was stone cold, and the mug still had dregs of tea at the bottom of it, as though it had gotten too cold for him to finish. "You beat me to it, Rosie. I was just about to take that downstairs," Robert said.

"It seems Miss Jenkins thought otherwise," I replied.

"I saw what happened between you and Charlotte earlier, I don't think I've ever seen her offer a toy to anyone. Not even me. You may have had the right idea in letting her keep it, she can get angry if someone else has her toys."

"Hm, I thought it best she keeps it."

"I spoke to my father about what we can do to help with your hand and we came up with a rather outlandish solution. Father believes that the more you move your fingers, the less chance they will have of seizing up like they did today. In order to help you with that, we thought you could use this." He reached into his hand and pulled out a little brown ball.

"What is it?" I asked, furrowing my eyebrows together and trying to figure out just what Robert was holding.

"It's clay. It should stay soft enough for you use it to exercise your fingers if they become too stiff. All you have to do is squeeze it in your hand and it should help, the burn paste will help as well. Since the burn didn't go as far as your palm, the clay should be all you need to retain the movement in your fingers."

"I thought clay was used for making a mess."

"It is. Father took this from Zachariah after he covered the walls of his room with it, he thought he could put it to good use."

I looked at the clay in Robert's hand, seeing it stain his hands a light brown as he rolled it around his palm. Although it sounded like a good idea, I wasn't too keen on ending every work day with my hands covered in clay and looking as though I had spent the afternoon making statues rather than doing the chores I had been assigned to. Having to clean things with my hand covered in clay wasn't ideal but looked as though it was the only choice I had if I was to stop dropping things and be able to do my trial completely. It looked like I didn't have much choice in the matter.

"I'll go down to the kitchens with you, so I can give you the clay once you've returned the tray, it'll also be better if I explained everything to Miss Jenkins."

"Very well."

With the tray in hand, Robert and I departed from the room and started the journey down the kitchens. Neither of us spoke as we climbed down the stairs, Robert rolled the clay over in his hand, focusing on that rather than anything else. It was rather amusing to see him turn the clay over and over in the palm of his hand as though it was the most fascinating thing in the world. It looked as though he didn't want to part with it like he wanted to keep it to himself. I wondered how long he had been playing with it since he and his father had come up with the idea to use the clay as a way of helping with my hand.

Reaching the kitchen, it didn't take too long for Robert to convey the idea he and his father had come up with. Miss Jenkins pulled a lot of strange faces as it was being explained by Robert and I knew she wasn't sure about the whole thing, especially with the mess the clay was likely to create both on my clothes and hands and the rest of the house. Eventually, however, Robert managed to talk her round to the idea, using the idea that I would be able to help more if it actually worked. By the time he was finished, she was set on the idea and even suggested I started using it that afternoon, so I could get the best out of the idea.

As Robert left us in the kitchen, I caught myself watching him longer than I intended. Watching him walk from the room and disappear from sight, the marks of the clay still evident on his hand.

~~~

A/N - We are back! I'm not gonna lie, it was a little hit and miss with getting this chapter out on time. Uni has started and it got crazy pretty quickly, but I did it!

Anyway, we have officially met the 3rd Ealing child! Isn't Charlotte just the cutest? Giving Rosie the bunny almost made me explode it was too cute! What about Rosie at the end there? Hmm, what's going on? :D

Comment below and don't forget to vote!

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to KaylaKeifer who hosted The Magic Awards with which we won Judges Pick! Thanks for hosting such amazing awards, Kayla!

First Published - October 2nd, 2018