“Yes, but I will do all my other things, too, Ellen. You know I will.”
Flora carried the cup and saucer to the sink, rinsed them in a trickle of cold water. Neither spoke of what was most on their minds, that Josephine had come down early this morning, gotten her cup of tea and explained that she was going back to bed, since she had lain awake most of the night. Such occurrences happened less frequently, although pain was visible in the shape of her mouth and the uncertainty of her steps as she drifted about the house adorned in black. She had only one dress in spring weight, which grew dirty, grease- spattered, speckled by an unfortunate spray of ink. The first thing that seem to have brightened her, it seemed to Ellen, Maud and Flora, who discussed her in whispers, was the suffrage petition. For this, her suffering quickened, was of use, its darkness like a timber beneath a bridge. Mr. Fairweather’s efforts to find Flora’s sister, too, brought her back to her old self—capable, steady. But yesterday, she had expected a visit from George. She had invited him to tea, and Ellen had made a sponge cake, and George had phoned, just as they were setting out the tray, to say he could not come. He was too busy at the office. She had hung up the telephone and sat by the instrument for a long time, while Ellen and Flora, in the kitchen, paused. Hands hovering, the cake uncut, a napkin half-folded. Josephine had been disproportionately devastated. She had gone upstairs for a nap, instead.
“There was a letter from Carrie this morning,” Ellen remarked, measuring cinnamon.
“Thank goodness. I’ll see that she gets it as soon as she’s up. Well, I’m off to do the rooms,” Flora said, tucking pins more firmly into her hair. “Oh, I will be glad when Maud is done school for the summer. Four hands are so much better than two.”
Ellen tipped the cinnamon into a bowl of flour, her expression wry.
“Maud will be married as soon as can be. Then, Flora, you’ll be thanking the Lord for your sister.”
—
After dusting the boarder’s bedrooms, smoothing their coverlets, sweeping their floors, Flora ran downstairs, tearing off her apron, stopping in the kitchen to pick up a bag of dried peas.
My garden!
The new cow stood in the pasture, sides heaving as she stretched her neck in shuddering moos. Flora ducked under the fence, put her arms around the cow’s neck, stroked the sleek hide.
“Shush, shush, it’s all right. You’ll have another calf.”
She left the cow and went to the garden. Sun broke through the clouds; snowmelt sharpened the soil’s scent. People actually do kind things, right out of the blue. Last week, a farmer arrived with horse and plough and turned the soil. He returned the following day with a harrow and chopped the rolled slabs into friable earth. Then he brought a wagonload of seasoned manure. Ellen baked him two rhubarb pies. Flora gave him a dozen eggs and a pair of socks. He turned red, protested. Said he took them only for his wife. Save her some knitting—tucking the socks into his coat.
Flora set sticks at either end of the plot, a string stretched between them. She raked a furrow, knelt and worked her way along the row on her knees, dropping last summer’s pale, wrinkled peas.
Wind lifted a new bang from her forehead, cut by Maud. The bang curled.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
The Hilltop sisters used the word often, referring to her. She had become a go-between, hurrying back and forth to Hilltop with Mr. Tuck’s drawings, upon which they pencilled changes. They insisted she have a cup of tea, gazed at her as she drank it. Oh, my dear, but do you know your own beauty? They murmured about it to one another, discussing the fashions she could wear. Once, they placed a feathered hat on her head and bid her look into the mirror. It was play to them, Flora saw. They assumed an equivalency between beauty and happiness. In her bedroom was a mirror on a stand, two little drawers for hairpins. Arms up, sweeping her hair into a chignon, she saw not a beautiful face but the expression in her eyes—a dark, puzzled yearning.
—
“I had a lot to do today,” she apologized, slipping into Mr. Tuck’s workshop. Dusty windows hazed the light, muted the blackbirds’ joyful burble.
“I seen you running back and forth, in and out,” he remarked. He dipped a brush into a can of glue.
“You want me to work on these shingles?”
He pursed his lips, nodded very slightly, drawing the bead of glue.
He had made a cardboard template. Diamonds, today. She laid the pattern over paper-thin cedar and picked up a knife. She set her feet on the chair’s rungs, leaned forward, concentrating. It did not, in fact, seem like work. There were parts of the house that she longed to be allowed to assemble. Setting the completed glass windows into their frames. Gluing batting onto the bed frames to make the quilts appear mounded.
“They’re nice,” she remarked. “The sisters. I was so scared to go there but I don’t mind, now.”
“Give you biscuits, do they?”
She flushed.
“I’m not a dog, Mr. Tuck.”
“Just teasing. Never say the right thing, do I. Why I never married.” He spoke without expression, as if he were reading lines in a play. He pinched his brush between finger and thumb, dipping it daintily into the glue can: he was surrounded by all things miniature—fine-tipped paint brushes, arranged by size; a small mitre box with a sharp-bladed saw; a rack of chisels; boxes filled with copper brads.
The sisters had paid a substantial advance.
“How long will it take, do you think?” she asked.
“Four months, maybe. Five.”
Enid would be here for its completion. Enid could help sew the quilts. She could go with Flora and Mr. Tuck to present the finished house to the sisters.
Mr. Tuck put down his brush, wiped his
