THE FUNERAL HAD been a quiet affair. Sallmer Weet was laid to rest with a smile on his face.

The world had ended for him in the eyes of the few looking on and the peacefulness of his passing seemed a blessing to those who had witnessed those final painful years.

Soopsie Weet looked on with a grimness that conveyed more than the regret for a lost loved one. Her mother had wept and her brother appeared confused, as if struggling to shape this world anew now that his father was no longer a part of it.

Then there was the doctor. Not the one who attended him in his last moments, but another man, strangely moved by the ceremony and very pressing in his condolences. He smelt a little of what she presumed as sterilising alcohol but could not be too sure.

"I have donated a large sum to a charity in his honour," he said after her father had been placed in his final resting place.

"That's nice," Soopsie replied, she by her forthright demeanour being the head of the family. Her mother's tearful regrets were too little too late and she was in no state to understand much of what was going on.

The funeral parlour had laid on a meal in one of their reception rooms for the few who had turned up. Old friends from the Metalloid District, some still twitching from past health issues, and some bringing with them combative words about blame, culpability and compensation, spoken softly it was true but with focus from long years of brooding over matters. The passing of Sallmer Weet seemed to bring such thoughts to the fore.

"We was all looking for a class action," one grizzled former employee of the metal works said. "But couldn't find a body to blame. Them poisons been there for decades and no one's sure who put 'em there."

"My father never spoke of blame," Soopsie said. He never in fact spoke much at all in the final years of his life except about the pain.

"He took on the burden bravely and fought as best he could," the doctor said. "Yet there was something in his eyes."

Soopsie turned to the medical man who had wandered about the reception room uncertainly, tasting some nibbles, sipping a drink but otherwise merely being a witness for the most part of other people's conversations.

"His eyes?" She thought of that one eye she could see as he lay in his hospital bed after the accident. Rarely was it open and on those occasions it looked past her, beyond the room they were in and far into the distance with a sort of hunger.

"Yes," and the doctor coughed as he controlled his emotions. "He endured the pain, his complaints being more like topics of conversation than anything else. Yet there was a pleading in his eyes. One word he never spoke out loud, but you could read it there in a glance."

"And what was that word?"

The doctor finished his drink in one final gulp.

"Mercy," he said thickly, placed the empty glass on the nearest table and walked out.

Well, the powers that be had granted him that, his daughter thought and then a creeping sensation regarding her own situation came upon her.

In the following days she began asking questions of herself. What had she done? The passing of her father had placed her own actions in a different light. She had made sacrifices but they had all been in vain. The money she needed was useless now. The money she wanted, more than she could spend in a lifetime, was a different matter.

Soopsie the maid felt the effect of sudden wealth in a way that she did not expect. The altering of perceptions, expectations, and a life of service had become a life of idleness.

She wanted to be up and doing. Arranging things. Feeling the gratification for a job well done. No, more than that. Feeling a sense of satisfaction when others noted that a job had been well done.

She wanted praise for doing.

Praise from the sycophants of the excessively rich held no substance. There was a colourless, vague superficiality about it all and she knew she could imbibe no gratification from such applause.

She had found something.

She thought the finding of it would open doors to other long-held dreams, treasures of the imagination. Yet she had only found loss.

***

FLOSSIE MUCH sat in her parlour at a loss. All she could do was stare.

It was a big-eyed stare.

A picture of Reggie Much, the one which caught his favourite comb-over from the best angle, sat upon a designer mantelshelf that cut a false pilaster in half about two thirds up.

Bloody fractions, she thought. Could never get her head around them. When they told her of Reggie's demise they said he'd been cut into ribbons. What kind of fraction was that?

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Her eyes welled with tears.

"Oh Reggie," she said in throaty tones. "Where did it all go wrong? We'd been so happy up until you fell in that fan weaving machine thingy. Trying a dare to make a new pattern. Always stretching things you was. Dear Reggie," and she sobbed anew.

Something about this Summer Pause had been dreadful. Like a cloud hanging in the air, a cloud of doom. Bitter and twisted.

Flossie flicked a card across the table at the opposite empty seat. She was alone in her parlour these evenings. Even misery had decamped to pastures gloomier. She flicked another card and it danced on its edge briefly before falling value up. A ten of posies. Like a funeral display.

Yes, it was a dismal summer all round.

Gathering the cards, Flossie made to shift and relocate to the kitchen for some cold tea. She did not have heart enough to heat the water up. Besides her widow's pension would only stretch so far and the compensation outlay dwindled in spectacular fashion thanks to those amazing on-grid bargain sites so full of sparkly things.

Then she heard a noise and sat back down.

"You just stay there ma'am," a voice called out in familiar, comfortable tones and in a daze the mistress of the house did just that. "I'll get us some tea," was the next instruction she heard.

"Yes," Flossie muttered automatically, without thought. "You just go ahead and do that." Her voice was flat, devoid of inflection, of feeling. Then a shadow at the edge of her vision resolved itself into a familiar figure.

"Why, Soopsie," she said, vocal cords tightening. "Who let you in?"

"Shredder ma'am. Good memories, dogs, in their noses I mean," and the errant maid stood there, still in her coat, the textured one bought at Shard and Razor for a year's wage in certain stations of life. Flossie sat there and stared back.

For a moment they both looked one at the other across the room, the low light accentuating their uncertain expressions as they explored each other's feelings from a careful distance.

"Tea sounds about right," Flossie eventually said.

"Right indeed ma'am, and lemon biscuits," and the spell was broken. Soopsie was all action, pausing only to pat the dog grinning knowingly at her in a corner as she bustled about a kitchen too long neglected or poorly maintained by daywork girls from some agency, most likely.

In a trice a sparkly tea pot appeared on a tray, cups, biscuits, milk jug and a shiny circular thing with emerald initials emblazoned upon its teeth-scratched iridescent surface.

"There you go ma'am, tuck in," and the maid paused over the display as her erstwhile mistress examined the assorted things before her. She looked up and noted the coat had disappeared, its gaudy velvet red and black design hidden from sight. Soopsie wore a modest dark blue frock trimmed with regulation lace and garnished with a small but perfectly formed pink carnation near the left shoulder.

"Pity there isn't company. You've produced so much," she said softly, looking down again.

"Much," the maid said, fingers fidgeting a bit. "Much and more."

Flossie's eye caught the plastic disc and she frowned.

"What's this?" and she lifted the thing, its chain pulling a spoon off a saucer. Instantly Soopsie replaced the spoon at its proper station and angle.

"It's all there, ma'am," the maid said, not looking at the widow as she tidied the cutlery. "Investments and the like. Much and more. Please, enjoy."

There was another pause as the tea was poured, the milk settled and then a brief, experimental sip. This was followed by a considerable sip and swallow and sigh.

"Thank you ma'am," a slightly tearful voice released itself from the usually unflappable Soopsie. Flossie glanced at her as she replaced her cup.

"For what?"

"Trusting me."

"For goodness' sake, come, sit. Misery loves company and you're about as miserable as a wet dog on a rainy day. Don't be a stranger. Tuck in. These lemon biscuits are just right."

With a clatter of eagerness the maid shoved her knees under the table and began her own repast with a relish not witnessed in living memory.

There was soft laughter, the clink of good crockery and the crunch of lightly baked delicacies amid conversation that settled matters to everyone's satisfaction.

"I noticed them oddments is gone," Soopsie observed after a moment.

"Well, I had a word, polite like, and something was done."

"Another cup?"

"Only if you tell me."

"Tell you what, ma'am?" and the growing warmth cooled a little with apprehension.

"Why you did it."

Soopsie the maid sat back in the chair usually favoured by Parget, perhaps the softer and less reprehensible of those old widows, and gave this burdensome question some consideration, chiefly upon how best to attack it, what angle to come at it from.

What were the things that girl had been saying in the park?

Truth is the foundation of all words, no matter what the spoken ones turn out to be. And there was something about generosity. Was it not one of the five wellsprings of joy?

"Well, I didn't trust you ma'am," she eventually said.

"Trust me? Goodness."

Soopsie poured another two cups of tea to linger over her thoughts a moment.

"The way they was hovering, deathbed-like, awaiting the moment. It didn't feel right ma'am. Like asking Shredder to babysit a bundle of newborn rabbits of an evening." The guard dog was deliberately starved during certain times of day to sharpen his appetite for intruders.

"I see."

"No, you don't ma'am. If you had you'd not be talking to me so cosy and company-like if you did."

The maid grabbed for the Pulse Ball disc and dangled it near the lantern on the table's corner so its light scattered across the room in dancing rainbows. It was hypnotic and ghostly all at once.

"It's all yours ma'am. Didn't touch a coin, except in investments. Did very well they did, replaced all the losses and then more, much more."

"Losses?"

"Looks like them biscuits is all finished, so I guess I'm done for the night. Already fed and watered Shredder so the help needn't worry."

She rose and gathered the crockery with heavy-handed care. Flossie watched her for a moment, her eyes glancing at the unclaimed disc more than once as she processed matters.

"Wait!" she said, surging forward and grabbing an outstretched hand that sought a crumb-covered plate. "I can't say I understand all of this, but a cloud of sorts has lifted. It seems a nice summer night and..." She paused and her lips worked with worry.

"...And, ma'am?" the maid said, moving to free the gentle grip on her wrist.

"Stay."

And she did.