“Here,” said Mrs. Kent. “They’re this morning’s, so they ain’t rocks yet.” She slid a plate of biscuits across the table. “There’s honey in the jar there.”
“Thank you.”
“Mmm. Ain’t nothing.”
It was a good deal more than nothing. The biscuits were huge and delicious, even if they’d started to go hard. I found the jar of honey, spooned some out onto one of the biscuits, and attacked it. Crumbs went everywhere, but at the moment, I didn’t care. It had been so long since breakfast that even the Chatham rabbits were starting to sound good.
I studied Mrs. Kent out of the corner of my eye while I ate. She had a young face and old hands. I wondered which one was closer to her actual age.
She left the room for a moment, then returned with a tin cup and a pitcher of water. I washed down the biscuits and mumbled my gratitude, hoping that I wasn’t making too terrible an impression with my lack of table manners. If I was, she didn’t show it.
A large orange cat leapt up onto the table, startling me. The housekeeper sighed. “Smiley, get your tail down off that.” The cat ignored her completely, gazing intently at the biscuits. I put my hand up to shield them.
“Smiley…” She swooped in and picked him up, dropping him unceremoniously on the floor. He stalked away, tail held high, very fluffy and completely unrepentant.
“He won’t marry you,” said Mrs. Kent abruptly.
I blinked at her, the last of the honey congealing on my tongue. For a confused instant, all I could think of was the cat, and why she thought I’d want to marry outside my species. “Beg pardon?”
The housekeeper shook her head. “The doctor. If you took the position thinking he’d marry you at the end of it, put that thought out of your head.”
It seemed that I still had energy enough to bristle. “I assure you,” I said, “that I hadnosuch thoughts. I am an illustrator and—and a naturalist, not a—a—” I couldn’t even think of the right words, probably because of all the other words playing through my head.
(scarecrow, hatchet-faced, bag of bones)
Mrs. Kent’s lips twitched. “All right,” she said. “Didn’t mean to get your back up. I figured it was better to have that out in the open, that’s all. Some women would be thinking this was a stepping stone to the other.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “And you wouldn’t want it anyway. He’s mean as an old snake, that one.”
“Then why do you work for him?”
Probably I wouldn’t have been so bold if I wasn’t tired and cross and resentful of having been forgotten at the station. Fortunately, Mrs. Kent did not seem to take offense. She snorted, removing her apron and hanging it on a peg. “Because he’s mean to everyone the same way. Doesn’t matter what color you are or if you’re a woman or a hundred years old. The doctor’s got nouse for anybody.” She smiled ruefully. “There’s worse people to work for, here in the South.”
I sighed, my irritation ebbing away. I was so tired. I’d been tired for years, ever since my father died. But Mrs. Kent was old enough to have seen the War Between the States, and probably she was even more tired than I was. “You’d think we could do better,” I said glumly.
“You’d think.” She picked up the lamp. “I’ll show you to your room. Well,aroom. It’ll do for tonight, and we’ll find you something better tomorrow.”
I nodded and stood up, brushing the biscuit crumbs off my skirt. “Thank you,” I said. “For the food and the room. And staying up.”
“Mmm. Well. Nobody starves in my kitchen, no matter what hour they come in.” I followed her out of the kitchen and down a hallway, then through two doors and up a staircase. I couldn’t follow the twists and turns very well, and was thoroughly lost by the time we reached a door. “Here you go. It’s clean.” She pushed the door open. “And there’s water in the cistern, so if you turn the tap, you’ll get something. Don’t know if I’d drink it, but it’s good enough for washing up.”
“Thank you,” I said, lugging my suitcase into the small room. It was plain but serviceable, with an iron bedstead, a clothes press, and a stand with a basin and a tap. Cistern-fed water on demand seemed absurdly luxurious. At the school, we’d only had a hand pump. “Err… why wouldn’t you drink it?”
Mrs. Kent paused with her hand on the doorknob. “Bugs,” she said. “They get into everything.” And then she closed the door behind her and was gone.
There was a swarm of white dragonflies on the ceiling. I stared up at them, profoundly confused. Why was that there?Howwasthat there? Had one of the girls done something to my ceiling as a prank?
The dragonflies were larger than my head, which meant that they were not native to North America, and they were evenly spaced and all facing in the same direction, which meant that they were… pressed tin tiles? Yes. Painted white.
This did not explain why they were on my ceiling. I sat up, wondering how to even begin explaining this to the headmistress, and caught a glimpse of my suitcase sitting on the floor next to the clothes press. Memory pushed back my disorientation and I rubbed my forehead.Right. I’m at Dr. Halder’s residence. I’ve arrived. I’m going to work as a scientific illustrator again. And apparently his ceilings have tin tiles with dragonflies on them.
I felt a stab of panic that I had overslept, but a glance out the window showed that it was still quite early. I was still on school time. The headmistress had no use for sluggards, and her definition of “sluggard” began at 6:00AM. Given how tired I was, I could easily have gone back to sleep until noon, but that seemed like a poor way to start my employment.
I had been too tired to wash up the night before. Now I ran water into the basin and learned what Mrs. Kent had meant about the bugs. A dead June bug floated on the surface of the water, green and shiny against the white porcelain. I had no particular fear of insects, but I never liked June bugs, because of the way they fly in your face if you’re standing anywhere near a light source. This one wasn’t going to be flying anywhere, but I still didn’t want to share the water with it. I fished it out, sighed, and used twice as much soap as normal.
I put on one of my two good sets of clothes, then made my way downstairs, wondering what to do next.Do I go and present myself to him? Is he even awake?My experiences with naturalists warred with my experiences teaching. Would Dr. Halder be pleased with my punctuality, or appalled to be bothered before breakfast?
For want of any better ideas, I made my way to the kitchen. Perhaps Mrs. Kent could advise me. She’d been kind enough last night, even if her suggestion about marriage had bordered on offensive. I had no plans to marry anyone. At thirty, I was officially a spinster, and it wasn’t as if one met many eligible bachelors at a girls’ school.
As a girl, I’d always assumed I would marry a naturalist and collaborate with him on scientific works. It was almost a cliché in my father’s circles that one eventually married one’s illustrator. Indeed, I’d met a number of wives who were clearly doing the lion’s share of the research, no matter whose name appeared on the frontispiece. My lack of physical charms had never seemed important, because my future husband would be marrying me for my ability to properly render leaf venation.
