Dressing, she considered the rehabilitation of Enid. The girl was accepting Maud’s grammar lessons. Repeat what she tells you, Flora urged.
She pinned up her hair. Josephine herself had taught the girl to play checkers and Old Maid. She gave her a basket containing knitting needles, a skein of cotton yarn and a simple pattern for making a washing-up cloth. She took Enid’s hands in her own and guided them over a purl stitch. She sat beside her and listened to her read. Enid’s favourite primer was about a girl named Flora. “Flora has been to pick flowers in the woods. See, she has some in her apron. Flora sat on a bank and made a wreath of flowers, and now she puts it on.” She pronounced the words carefully, her accent still much more pronounced than her sister’s. Her th’s like f’s.
Josephine went down the back stairs, smelling the first smoke of the morning fire.
Enid’s healing would need planning, care. She could not have explained it to herself, the steps she would take: it was a compendium of details, known and absorbed since Simeon’s death. Oddly, it leavened the weight of everything else she had undertaken: bookkeeping, the needs of pantry and laundry, the complaints of the boarders—these tasks felt less onerous, as if they were now part of something precious and rare.
—
After the day’s chores were done, the women sat on the veranda. Josephine and Ellen took the rocking chairs, Sailor settled at Josephine’s feet, while Flora, Enid and Maud perched on the steps. The floorboards retained the day’s heat; the birds were quiet, purposeful, flying from bush to tree. August leaves made a dry shirring. The breeze smelled of wood smoke and roasting meat. In the garden beds, lilies had shut, sepals tucking away stigma and anther for the night, like locked houses.
They watched as two boys dashed into the road to retrieve wobbling hoops. A high-stepping bay horse trotted downhill, pulling a hooded chaise, passing a wagon creaking slowly upwards, loaded with barrels and boxes, returning to the countryside after a day in town. Harland’s father, The Commodore, paused to bow as he made his twice-daily constitutional, his little terrier panting at his heels; and the MacVey sisters swept past in white dresses, carrying ivory-tipped walking sticks, waving with lace-gloved hands.
Ellen adjusted her spectacles and swept open the newspaper.
“Do ya’s want to hear about what the women are doing, now?” The paper was running a brand-new column: For and About Women.
Enid hugged a yellow gingham dress around her knees. She brightened, expectant; she liked Ellen, and Ellen, sensing it, had had a change of heart.
Maud and Flora exchanged a smile. Yesterday, they had complained to Ellen of her fascination with murder.
“Yes.”
“Seven Maine schoolmarms, tired of boarding house life, are planning to erect a cottage for their own use. They have saved a few hundred dollars each and their building enterprise will be undertaken on the co-operative plan.”
Ellen lowered the paper and removed her spectacles.
“There’s a thing, now. No men in the house. Just ladies, like us.”
“They’re likely suffragists,” Maud said. “What do you think, Mother?”
Recently, George had announced to Maud that he would wait until she was twenty-one before discussing selling the house. He had reminded her, however, that the property on Queen Street, so perfect for Mother, might not still be available at that time, and that if she should change her mind they might take Mother on a drive to see it. Even in memory, she felt a wave of irritation. He had adopted his uncle’s tone of voice, choice of words, mannerisms. She longed to report the conversation to Lucy, to lay plans for how they might thwart George.
“Are you tired of boarding house life?”
Josephine was startled by the question. “What? Am I…why, no, Maud. No, I have grown quite accustomed to it. It is a way to stay in this house where everything holds a memory of your father. It makes…it simply, you know…it changes our dream into a new dream that somehow includes the old one. No, I wouldn’t want to.”
She raised a hand, suddenly, as if she were attending a meeting.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you all. I had a note today from Aunt Azuba. She wrote to say that a date has been set for presenting the suffrage petition to the legislature. She says this is the most important suffrage petition ever to come before the government. She says that if this petition fails there is fear that the momentum will die and it will take years to get back to where…” She paused, considered, resolved something. “…to where we are now. So she asks if we would start a special committee just for our town. For the sole purpose of gathering signatures.”
Ellen lowered the newspaper to her lap.
“Now, then,” she sighed. “As if we had nothing else to do.”
“Oh, but we should start a suffrage committee. Mother, we should.” Maud fidgeted at the top of the steps, fanning her face with a hosta leaf, surreptitiously unbuttoning her collar and the top two buttons of her dress.
“I agree, Maudie,” Josephine said. The dog sat up on his haunches. She worked her fingers into his white ruff. “I took the liberty of saying we would do it. That I would do it, at the very least.”
Maud half turned to her mother. Her voice took on Carrie’s pedantic tone. “I feel as if there would be no point to my life, Mother, if it fails. Why should I try for an education, if men still won’t let me vote? As Carrie says—why should we marry if…” She waved her hand vaguely at her mother, the house. “As you have experienced, Mother.” She turned to Flora. “You’ll help, won’t you, Flora? You and Enid? You spoke so well that one time. Remember the march, when they threw water on us? Wasn’t that fun?”
“It’s about the vote,” Flora murmured to Enid. She laid her
