Free At the Sign of the Star by Katherine Sturtevant Page A

comes to childbed.”
    â€œBut where does he suckle? Why is he not in the country with a wet nurse?”
    â€œMy mother does not stand for it, not anymore. She says they are more likely to die if they are sent away.”
    Just then the little girl came in with a runner draped over her arms. It was indeed beautiful. The stitches seemed to shine in the afternoon sunlight that came through the drawing room window.
    â€œThank you, Jenny,” Anne said, and then to me: “I know you do not really want to see my work. Why should you? But I am so proud, I must show you.”
    So we bent over her work together, while Tom clutched at my knees and Jenny stuck her head in my way.
    â€œYou see this stitch, here in the eye of the peacock’s tail? It was very difficult, I cannot tell you how difficult. I had to begin anew a dozen times. My father vowed he would buy me no more thread, but of course he did not mean it. Thomas, no!” For the baby was crumpling her work in his little hand.
    I pried his tiny fingers from the cloth and lifted him into my arms. He was round and light, like good bread. His little white dress floated around him as I lifted him.
    â€œHow lucky you are to have a brother,” I said.
    â€œHe is so precious! But they are all precious. It’s a hardship on my father that we are so many, but I mean to have as many myself when I marry, if I am strong enough. And you, do you want many children?”
    â€œI will take what I am given, I suppose,” I said. “What is the good of wanting things when we have no choices? I would rather spend my time selling books than raising babies, but I suppose my fate will be like that of every woman.”
    Anne looked at me a moment, considering. “No one can force you to marry,” she said at last. “It is not lawful.”
    â€œThere is so much more than law that binds us,” I answered her.
    â€œYou read much, I can tell. Tell me about your father’s shop, and what you do there?”
    Then I spoke of the trade, and of listening to Mr. Dryden and Mr. Wycherley speak on poetical subjects, and of lingering at Will’s. I spoke slowly at first, but she listened with great attention to all I said, and asked many questions. It had been long since anyone cared to hear me talk, and as I spoke I felt like a stream that has shrunk to a trickle during the dry months, and now swells with the first rainfall. Anne Gosse seemed to know little of her father’s business or any other; she was concerned only with women’s things. But I did not care. It was a fine, fine thing to have conversation once more!
    The little boy, who had gone from the room, presently came back with an older sister.
    â€œPlay with me!” he begged Anne.
    â€œNo, let us do some acrostics,” the sister, who was perhaps nine, suggested.
    Anne shook her head. “Take Charlie away, please, Gertrude,” she said. She kissed Charlie’s cheek. “We’ll play Hunt-the-Slipper after dinner, won’t we? Right now Margaret and I must talk.”
    â€œYou may call me Meg,” I said to her.
    She smiled at me, a wide, bright smile. “Sometimes they call me Annie,” she said. “I don’t mind it.”
    We talked and we talked. She was a glad, cheerful girl, who laughed at all my jokes. Jesting with her made me think of Hester, and I missed her with a sharp ache, and reminded myself: I can go to her if I like.
    The Gosse house was larger and grander than ours. In the dining room hung a portrait of the King in a rich gilt frame, the finest I had ever seen. Around the great table there were walnut chairs with velvet backs, so many that not one grown person sat on a bench or a stool while we ate. Dinner was very fine, with four courses, and baked bananas for dessert. I ate until my stomach ached inside its lacings. Gertrude was the youngest child at table; the younger children were fed elsewhere. But Anne’s brothers