The Sister's Tale by Beth Powning (e reader for manga .txt) 📕

Flora, her mending complete, sat across the table from Maud. She watched equations— −2x − 3 = 4x − 15 —emerging from the sharpened tip of her pencil.

“I could get you some books from school,” Maud remarked, setting down her pencil and working at the paper with an eraser.

One day, Flora thought, when she and Enid were reunited, she would need to go to a real job, every morning, like the boarders.

“All right.”

She tipped her head to read the spines of Maud’s books, piled on the table. History, geography, English. With Maud’s coaching, she could study after her work was done, late into the night. She did not know what this learning would do for her, whether she would ever go to school or become a lawyer like Miss Burlingame. She knew what it was to ferret and scratch and kill and steal to keep a little sister alive; she had seen old women, stunned with loneliness and hunger, waiting for gruel at long tables; had stood on a station platform and looked down on a sea of men willing to purchase her. She ran her palm over the cover of the topmost book—she would become educated.

“Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton…” Ellen looked up. “Now, who is she?”

“She’s a suffragist,” Maud said. “She’s fighting for women to have the vote. And to have equal rights to men.”

Ellen nodded, repressing comment, momentarily at a loss, her opinion uncertain on this topic. “…in a recent visit to Paris, met some of the most distinguished suffragists of France at a reception given at the residence of her son, Theodore Stanton.”

“Women like Cousin Carrie,” Maud murmured, making an equal sign with two short dashes of her pencil. Satisfied, Flora thought, wondering if arithmetic was fun.

Ellen lowered the newspaper onto her lap with a sudden rustle.

“Is Cousin Carrie a suffragist?”

“Haven’t you been listening to Lucy’s letters, Ellen?”

Flora realized that not a sound had come from Josephine’s room since she had gone up to clear away her breakfast dishes. Leaving Ellen and Maud arguing about the difference between suffragists and suffragettes, she went up the stairs, knocked gently on Josephine’s door, cracked it open. In the dim light, she saw a mound of bedding strewn with papers. Josephine had fallen asleep propped against her pillows, hand on one of the pages.

—

At six o’clock, when only Mr. Tuck had returned, Ellen covered the serving bowls with tea towels and slid them into the warming oven. Flora ran up the front stairs and knocked on his door.

He was sitting on a straight chair in the room that had once belonged to George, hunched over a wastebasket, carving, his blade gleaming in the light of a kerosene lamp, which illuminated only the knife, his hands, his knees, and a patch of flowered wallpaper.

“We haven’t rung the dinner bell because none of the others have come home.”

He glanced up at the window. Black, speckled with knots of ice.

She put her hand on the pleated folds of her gingham bodice. He looked at her from beneath his shock of hair. Comfortable in his warm room, with his knife. Waiting. She wondered if he wrote letters, if he had friends.

He set down the knife.

“Suppose you want me to go look for them.”

He followed her down the stairs, sock feet making no sound. He lifted down his coat, still wet. He pulled a damp cap and mittens from the pockets.

“Wait,” she said. She rummaged in the hall closet for dry mittens and cap.

She watched as he suited himself for the weather. He took his time, tugging the laces of his boots, pulling the cuffs of his coat down over his mittens, wrapping a scarf around his neck and mouth so that only his eyes showed. His movements were contained and she could not tell if he resented being called upon to help or relished the task, tucking it away as a bargaining chip.

She held the door as he trudged away into the darkness, leaning out to watch the rays of his lantern lighting streaks of wind-raked flakes.

Returning to the kitchen, she retrieved her work basket and sat by the stove. Josephine soothed Sailor, stroking the concave silkiness beneath his jaw. Maud fitted a sock over a darning egg. Ellen picked up her knitting.

“They can die within sight of home, you know,” she said. “Oh yes, they can. Mr. McFee was lost until two a.m. His wife, poor thing, nearly died herself of the fright. He came staggering in, half-dead. I’ve lost the horses, he said. I had to leave them. Well. His men went out and found them. They were almost to the barn.”

“Do you think the boarders could be lost right here in town?”

Ellen looked at Maud over her busy fingers. She sniffed, speaking as if reluctant. “Only ’tis good we had a man to send.”

’Tis good we had a man.

Flora noticed that Josephine turned from the words, setting her chin on the heel of her hand. The house was silent, save for the sounds of the storm. Even Ellen sighed rather than spoke, all during the hour it took until the front door opened and Jasper Tuck stamped in, having located Mrs. Beaman two houses down the hill, Miss Harvey shuddering in the lee of the skating rink, and Mr. Sprague in the process of knocking on doors, seeking Miss Harvey.

“Got ’em,” Jasper Tuck called.

A tremendous stamping in the hallway. Boots, the snapping of coats, exclamations.

Ellen flew up from her chair and Flora knelt to retrieve her knitting, which had fallen beneath the table, five stitches dropped.

—

Three days later, on a Saturday after the roads had been cleared, the trains were running, and the sky was blue, a knock came in mid- afternoon. Josephine opened the back door to find Cousin Carrie and Lucy on the step.

They stepped in, both talking at once, exuberant, eyes swimming and cheeks red from the frigid air.

“We just came from a Women’s Christian Temperance Union meeting,” Lucy