Free The Callender Papers by Cynthia Voigt

used, trying to determine what it was about him that made him so easy to converse with, I met with Mr. Thiel walking back from some pasture; burly and strong he looked, like a countryman not a painter. His boots were coated with mud, his hair matted with sweat.
    â€œLook at you,” he said. I could have said the same to him but refrained. His presence cast shadows over my mood, but I would not let that dominate my spirits. “Mrs. Bywall made the dress for me.” I thought he might remark on the alteration in my appearance, but he chose not to. He waited without speaking for me to catch up with him.
    â€œI’ve just come from her father’s house. They farm this property for me, her parents and the two brothers.”
    â€œI didn’t know that.”
    â€œIt looks to be a good year,” he went on. “The corn is coming up nicely. I hear you’ve been to the village this afternoon.”
    â€œHow did you know that?”
    â€œYoung McWilliams told me.”
    â€œIt would be hard to keep a secret around here,” I observed.
    He thought about that. “Some secrets seem impossible to keep. Others, no. I told Mac to come calling tomorrow. It’s going to rain. I advised him to bring his Latin book.”
    I was silent.
    â€œYou’re not going to get angry at me again, are you? You have no cause.”
    I supposed he was right. I had, after all, told him I wanted to know Mac. “No. I did see him in the village but we didn’t speak.” Apparently, though, he had come running up to find Mr. Thiel, when it had looked to me as if he were settling in to fish all afternoon. I didn’t care for that at all. “How do you know it will rain?” I asked, to change the subject.
    â€œMatt Jenkins told me, and he’s seldom wrong. He says we’re in for two or three days of it.”
    I looked up at a blue sky between thickly leavedbranches of trees. A few white puffy clouds blew across it. “It doesn’t look like rain to me.”
    I don’t know why I put off telling Mr. Thiel that I had met Enoch Callender, whether it was some instinct that it would not please my employer, or some desire to hold a secret to myself a little while. I did tell him at dinner. When he heard, he looked at me sharply. “How did you like him?” he asked at last, as if he knew he should say something but was reluctant to talk on the subject.
    â€œI liked him very much,” I began, and then went on to relate our conversation about New York. I made quite a little speech. Mr. Thiel sat listening, watching me darkly without moving. I did not tell him that Mr. Callender had guessed at my name and guessed correctly, amusing as that was. That seemed the kind of frivolity of which Mr. Thiel would not approve. But I did ask him if he would tell me what had happened, when Mrs. Bywall had been imprisoned.
    â€œI can’t see why you need to know that,” he said, and said no more. I deduced that he had refused my request and put it out of my mind. I was therefore quite surprised when he instructed me to join him in his sitting room as we rose from the table.
    It was Mr. Thiel’s habit to retire to his sitting roomand to stay there until after I had gone upstairs. I spent the evenings washing up with Mrs. Bywall, then reading in my own room upstairs. I could not tell what this change in the ordinary course of things meant.
    Mr. Thiel’s room, at the rear of the house, was still lit by the setting sun and filled with pink-gold bars of light. It was a small room, furnished with only a drawing table and two armchairs drawn up beside the small fireplace. The walls were paneled. One oil painting hung over the fireplace. Mrs. Bywall brought me in a pot of tea, with a pitcher of milk, a bowl of sugar, and a cup, on a tray. On another tray, already waiting by one of the chairs, a bottle of brandy and a snifter and a cigar box were set out. The most interesting thing