Free The Bride's House by Sandra Dallas Page B

the cameo. Then quickly, he leaned down and kissed Nealie on the lips.
    “Mr. Spaulding!” Nealie said, stepping back and touching her lips with her fingers. “Aren’t you supposed to ask first?” A girl in a story in Peterson’s Magazine had said that, and Nealie had liked the words.
    “I’ve wanted to do that since the first time I saw you in the mercantile. Forgive me.”
    “That’s all right. I liked it. You can do it again, if you want to.”
    “I liked it, too.” Will grinned at Nealie as he put his hands on her shoulders. “You are an odd girl, all right.” He kissed her a second time, and she kissed him back.

 
     
    CHAPTER 4
     
    T HEN BEGAN THE HAPPIEST TIME in Nealie’s short life, days so fine she thought she walked on the wind. She spent every Sunday with Will, at least, every Sunday he wasn’t working, because despite his grandfather’s ownership of the Rose of Sharon, Will took shifts that required him to work nights and Sundays, just like any other engineer. The Sundays that Will was occupied, Nellie went with Charlie, because she was mindful of what Mrs. Travers had said about jealousy. Besides, going around with Charlie was more fun than sitting in the boardinghouse, stitching Mrs. Travers’s endless quilt pieces together. Nealie had never been a hand for sewing.
    The two men were as different as red and blue. Will brought presents—a packet of peppermints, a box of cheese, a tin of crackers. But Charlie worked around the boardinghouse, chopping kindling, repairing the porch, painting the woodshed and the privy. Once, Nealie and Charlie hung shutters on the house as a surprise for Mrs. Travers. The woman had wished for just such shutters, so Charlie made them, painted them green, and kept them at his cabin until the day when Mrs. Travers took the train to Denver to shop. The shutters were in place when she returned, and Nealie was as excited as Charlie to see the older woman’s joy.
    “It was Miss Nealie’s idea,” Charlie said.
    It really wasn’t. “It was Charlie’s,” Nealie admitted. “He’s the one got the shutters and put them up.”
    “ We put them up,” Charlie said, smiling at Nealie, but she didn’t respond. He had not asked again if Nealie would marry him, but the girl knew he had not given up.
    So did Mrs. Travers, who told Nealie, “Charlie’s a sticker. I guess you’d have to beat him with piece of cordwood to keep him from coming around.”
    Nealie didn’t mind being with Charlie, although he could be glum at times. He’d stare at her, his eyes dark, and he wouldn’t turn away when she caught him at it. He liked to act superior, telling her what to do. Once when the day was hot and she was sitting outside with her skirt up to her knees and her legs stretched out, Charlie came up on the porch and told her it was not right, her sitting with her legs showing, and she’d had to pull down her hot skirts. “You ought not to do it. You ought not at all. You got to be a lady, Miss Nealie.”
    Will wasn’t so critical. He liked everything Nealie did and told her he’d never met a girl who pleased him so much. They ate supper at the Hotel de Paris and took long walks around Georgetown, up one street and down another, always ending up at the bride’s house to see its progress. Sometimes, they went up close so that Will could examine the workmanship on the outside, study the framing and the stone foundation or run his hands over the trim, which had been cut by a jigsaw into fanciful shapes, like wooden lace. “It’s a sturdy house,” he said, looking up at the big gable in front that was decorated with carved trim. They walked around the house and admired the tall windows whose decorative tops seemed like eyebrows. The tower soared into the sky, and Nealie guessed that at night, you could see heaven from it.
    Once, as they climbed the stairs to the front porch to see the door, which was made of heavy wood that was painted with circles and swirls to look like