Free Endure My Heart by Joan Smith Page B

Those who are ashamed of receiving aid have a son or daughter stand by their side to dash off home with it, while the mother returns to the yard to chat with the non-receivers, as though she is unaware this is calico Sunday at all. When you see a small handful of women remaining behind long after all the others are gone, you know they are the handful who would want and could well use a length, but are too proud to go on the parish record. They will saunter into the porch, looking over their shoulders, and mention having dropped a glove or left a book behind, if an overseer has been at my shoulder, this is his time to depart.
    “Oh, Miss Anderson,” they will say in surprise, “You are here! But it is calico Sunday, of course. It quite slipped my mind. What quality is it?” They come and feel it, and if the woman has the good fortune to be alone with me, she will then proceed. “All this left over? There must be six ells at least. What will be done with it?”
    “I haven’t a notion, Mrs. Samson,” is my line. “Would you care to take a piece?”
    “Oh, I am not on charity!” she will exclaim, offended.
    “Seems a shame to waste it. But it may find a use before long.”
    “If you are looking for something to do with it...”
    The scissors are already snipping off a length, soon the hands (Mrs. Samson’s) are folding it into a parcel of the smallest possible dimensions and stuffing it into a recticule of the largest possible, carried on purpose on this day. Then Mrs. Samson goes to pick up the glove she carefully forgot behind, while Mrs. Carr comes to comment with surprise that several yards are left over, and what will be done with it?
    The process was speeded up today as Mr. Williams, not on to our routine and the privacy desired, stood at the doorway waiting to speak to me. I cut the overlength up and folded it myself to give to the unentitled poor with only a nod and a smile as they went to get their glove. “Left over,” I said, as they each snatched it up eagerly.
    “Ye certainly keep yourself busy, Miss Anderson,” Wicklow said as the last woman departed, her calico miraculously disappeared into some fold of her pelisse or pocket. The reticule was not bulging as it ought.
    “Be not solitary, be not idle. You follow the first rule, I the second.”
    “I follow both when I can.”
    “What is it you wish to see me about?” I had an idea he meant to ask me to walk or drive out with him. It had been discovered during the week that besides a handsome mount, Mr. Williams also possessed a whisky, a one-horse open carriage. I prepared my refusal with an inward smile.
    “About the choir,” he surprised me by replying.
    “You have already complimented me on the choir.”
    “Aye, so I have. It’s so fine I’ve a mind to join, if ye’ll have me.”
    I hastily considered this. It would be inconvenient to have him in the gallery, where I often managed a quiet word with Jemmie, as I had done this morning, discovering Crites knew nothing of the one landing at Lord Aiken's place, so that we could use it for the next delivery.
    “How is your voice?” I asked, to give myself time to think. There were advantages to his joining. I could not be forever running into the shop like the Turner twins, and if I were to get at his brain at all, this would be an opportunity.
    “It’s considered fair,” he replied. “Good and loud at least.”
    “If you like, Mr. Williams, why do you not come to the practice next Wednesday evening, here in the gallery.”
    “I’ll do that, miss.”
    Let it be understood from henceforth that when I was “miss,” Mr. Williams was smiling and flirting with me; when I was “ma’am,” he was most formal. It will save a deal of repetition. “I hope it will not cut too severely into your socializing,” I said, with a little bit of encouragement.
    “It’s a sociable town surely. Everyone very friendly. Almost everyone, that is to say,” he added with an arch look.
    “You must