Lily Fairchild. Don Gutteridge

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СКАЧАТЬ a Presbyterian inured to temptation, hesitated just long enough before accepting the offering in both hands, then quickly regained the offensive. “A foundling?” she asked, raising the tip of her Calvinist nose.

      Bridie touched the reins smartly and Benjamin lurched forward. Looking straight ahead she said, “My daughter,” and was already moving too resolutely for any exclamation to be heard. Lily thought she heard a berry-box crack open as it struck the ground.

      “My gracious, you’re early! Barely got my bonnet on! But ain’t you a sight for sore eyes; an’ you brought the wee one along for company. How’s my Lily Blossom doin’ today? Cat got your tongue?” Mrs. Salter was constitutionally cheerful despite her husband being a Methodist lay preacher who could, according to Auntie “rant and roll with the best of them hell-an-damnationers.”

      “Heard a box of your tomatoes went bad on you last week,” Bridie said from the side porch of the St. Clair Inn. “Here’s an extra two boxes of the best. Guaranteed.”

      The good lady blushed. “Goodness me, but it’s that big-mouth girl of mine blabbin’ an’ exaggeratin’ all over town. I’ll take the switch to her, I reckon.” She also took the berries.

      Vines of ivy and other exotica climbed about a third of the way up the walls of the stone cottage belonging to the Misses Baines-Powell, plump Caroline and fat Charlotte. The sign in front announced “Baines-Powell: Musical Instruction, By Arrangement.” Bridie tried to explain what that meant. Only one of the instructresses ever came to the back door, though not always the same one. The other hovered in the draped shadows of the sitting room beyond.

      “Found a slug in my cabbage,” said Miss Charlotte, peering past Bridie at Lily, who was holding a rack of berry-boxes, as if there were some direct but unnamable connection between slugs and girl-helpers of questionable kin.

      “Boil them like I told you?” Bridie asked.

      “Of course. Made no difference. Ugly thing popped out onto Miss Baines-Powell’s plate an’ she almost ’et it, didn’t you, dear?”

      Muffled assent from within.

      “Get a rollin’ boil, Charlotte, an’ keep at it for five to seven minutes. Nothin’ else can be done.”

      Bridie took three boxes of berries from the rack and set them beside the eggs and carrots on the porch step. “There you are, Charlotte. That’ll be ninety-six cents. Any changes for next week? The corn’ll be in most likely.”

      Charlotte surrendered the money and stood watching them leave. Lily always lingered behind a bit, ears pricked.

      “Scruffy little ragamuffin, ain’t she?”

      “You think with the prices Bridie charges she’d be able to put a decent dress on the girl.”

      “Might even be pretty, don’t you think, Lottie?”

      “It’d take some scrubbin’, I’m afraid.”

      Bridie always walked steadily forward; she was not a lingerer. Once she turned and said, “Don’t let those two old maids go puttin’ a lot of tom-fool notions in your head.”

      The Templeton house was the most attractive of their stops, though by no means the most ostentatious in town. It wasn’t even brick, but the siding was lovingly lapped and painted a shade of blue that resembled the River when the ice leaves it in March. The gardens here flourished, invariably dazzling Lily with their lush variety: delphinium, giant poppies, sunflowers, peonies, arboured roses, and marigolds and lilies with the tang of marsh still in them.

      Mrs. Alice Templeton almost always intercepted them at the side door. Trim, silver-haired, neatly attired, smiling with both eyes, she invariably asked them to come into the front den, to cool or warm or dry themselves, depending on the season. Sometimes Maurice Templeton, a prominent lawyer, was discovered snoozing there into a gray volume on his lap. Lily feasted on the sight of book-lined walls, porcelain figurines and blue chinaware displayed in an adjoining dining room. The odour of pipe-tobacco lingered and stirred the memory.

      On a lucky day there was Ceylon tea and tarts, and talk.

      “Your brother’s daughter, you say? I can certainly see your eyes there, no question about that.”

      “She’s had no upbringin’, mind you, but she’s a good worker.”

      “Another cake, Lily?”

      “No, ma’am. Thank you.”

      “Go ahead, looks like it’d do you good.”

      Lily glanced at Aunt Bridie. “No, thank you, ma’am.”

      “Say, Bridie, my girls are both at boarding school in London, as you know, and I’ve never thrown away any of their dresses or slips. God knows, there’s a pile of bonnets too in a trunk –”

      Bridie rose suddenly to her full height. “Thank you for the tea, missus, but we really must be gettin’ along. Got a schedule to keep.” In fact, the Templetons were always their last stop.

      “But I haven’t paid you yet.”

      “Next time,” Bridie replied; they were already at the door. Once away, Bridie tried to make light of their hasty departure. “We’d never get away from the old gabbler. Never did hear anyone like to carry on so and fritter away so much time. Besides, your uncle’d wear his shoes to bed if we left him alone too long.”

      Then, more seriously, she added, “They’re all the same, Lily. You remember that. Can’t leave off interferin’ with people’s lives.”

      Lily was not sure. Was it “interferin” to offer unused dresses and bonnets? And that triggered another thought: why had Luc never delivered father’s trunks? And why had she not heard from her father? She was sure he loved her and she thought often of his kindly face.

      Come winter, the physical labour of planting, weeding and harvesting was exchanged for equally arduous indoor tasks. Bridie made quilts and candles and soon discovered that Lily’s fingers were more nimble than her own. Her chores in the barn and coops never ended, nor her share of the cooking, regular mending and wood chopping when Chester’s back acted up, as it did more often of late. Lily found the fine needlework as fatiguing as hoeing lettuce; but she loved arranging the harlequin swatches of the quilts, composing their colours into prescribed patterns. By April Bridie and Lily had stitched eight quilts that would bring ready cash to tide them over the lean spring months. With candle sales, there was sufficient to buy them each a pair of new leather boots from McWhinney’s Haberdashery.

      By the third summer, after her fourteenth birthday, Lily Ramsbottom was making half of their deliveries alone. More and more, Bridie left the egg-and-vegetable side of the business to her, while she herself drummed up further trade in the expanding sections back of Christina Street or scouted the competition’s prices at the Saturday market beside the St. Clair Inn. As far as Lily could tell, Bridie was never tempted by the displays of finery in the shops along Front Street.

      “Tell me, Lily dear, what Church is your aunt raisin’ you in?” asked Mrs. McHarg, sweetly, for her husband’s sake.

      “The green peppers’re good today, ma’am. Crisp as ice.”

      “You areattendin’ a church of some kind, aren’t СКАЧАТЬ