Free Or Give Me Death by Ann Rinaldi

on my shoulder. "Come make me a cup of coffee. And you can tell me what you know of the dancing school at the Hoopers'."
    ***
    T HE RAIN GOT even heavier. We took our coffee in the front parlor. I brought baby Edward in and held him on my lap. The darling behaved so that he made me proud.
    Once, during our conversation, there came a faint thump from belowstairs.
    We exchanged looks. "Clementina, how am I to abide this?" I whispered. "It's like there's an animal confined down there."
    "You must think of this little fellow," she said. And she reached across the round table to take his hand. Edward grasped her finger.
    "Yes. You are right." I hugged Edward close. His sturdy little body comforted me. His coos and gurgles guided my reason.
    "Did I tell you? I'm going to run a poetry contest for women," Clementina said. "You'd be surprised how many hereabouts put pen to paper. You write poetry, Patsy. You must write a poem for the contest."
    I looked at her serene face. Write a poem? About what? Then I heard a thump from the cellar. About my mother in the cellar, I thought.
    I smiled back and said mayhap I would.
    ***
    T HE MORE I THOUGHT about it, the more I knew what I must do.
    Mama had the sight. No amount of shilly-shallying around the subject could deny that. Not with the storm and flood outside.
    After supper, when the children were quiet and I'd put an exhausted Clementina in Mama's old room, I went into the kitchen. "Put up a plate of food and I'll bring it down to Mama," I told Pegg.
    "You oughtn't to do that, Miss Patsy," she said.
    "Well," I snapped, "do any of you want to do it?"
    Nobody answered. "She been quiet," Pegg said. "Maybe we should leave her be."
    "And maybe we should leave her to starve," I said. "Fix the plate, and bring it to me." I felt like the mistress of the household. It was a good feeling, and I hoped it would last.

Chapter Ten
    S HE SAT ON A BENCH by the hearth, holding a cake mold in her hands. The fire was near out. The room was chilled.
    On the floor at her feet there was flour and some broken eggs.
    "Mama? Mama, I have supper for you."
    For a moment there was no recognition in her eyes. The front of her chemise and petticoat were stained. Her mobcap was off, and there was flour in her hair, which was in the most pitiable arrangement I have ever seen.
    "How can I make this cake when I have no frogs' legs?" she asked me.
    "Mama, you don't need frogs' legs."
    "What do you know about cooking? All the best cakes have frogs' legs."
    I gave her the food I'd brought. She ate. Tears kept coming out of my eyes while I watched her. "Mama, it rained like you said it would. We have terrible floods. I think you have the sight. You can tell what's going to happen. And I need to know some things."
    She smiled.
    "Who is going to inherit what you have, Mama? Which of us girls? Will it be me? Or Anne? Or Betsy?"
    She leaned closer to me. "The frogs' legs, if cut up properly, make just the right spice for a cake," she said.
    I left her there with her food and went back upstairs.
    ***
    T HE FIRST THING I saw when Anne, William, and Silvy returned after a week away was that Anne had cut her hair. Short. It came just below her ears.
    "What did you do?"
    She stood next to the Hooper chaise, sassy as ever. "The other girls wanted to see how I'd look if my hair was short." She shook her head. The hair bounced. "I like it." She grinned.
    "You look like a boy!"
    "Now I can be a pirate. Like Anne Bonny and sail with Captain Calico Rackman."
    "How could you do that to your hair!"
    "Or maybe I'll be like Mad Ann Baily. She dressed in buckskins, carried a tomahawk, and collected Indian scalps. And she came to Virginia in 1750 as an indentured servant!"
    "Know what I learned?" from William.
    I sent the driver of the chaise to the kitchen for some repast and walked the children to the house. "What?"
    "I learned what part of the swine's foot the devil resides in."
    "God's shoe buckles!" I stopped on the path to the house. "Pa