Free The Calling of Emily Evans by Janette Oke Page A

reeked with mustiness, and was full of spider webs. Emily ducked the webs and proceeded to the next room.
    It too was small, with stained walls and a dirty floor. It held an old-fashioned wood stove and a small painted cupboard, with a wooden table and two chairs standing beneath the room’s single window. In a corner a rough shelf supported a few discarded items. Two overstuffed chairs, ugly and defiant, sat right where they had been left.
    “It sure isn’t anything fancy,” Emily breathed to herself, and then felt guilty about her evaluation.
    “It’s not that I expected it to be a palace, Lord,” she apologized.“I just want neighborhood folks to feel welcome here.”
    Emily spotted a small door leading off the main room. The room behind it was not much bigger than a large-sized closet. A cot almost filled it. There were several nails sticking out of the wall boards, and Emily assumed they were meant for hanging garments on. No cupboard. No dresser of any kind. The bare window looked out into a weed-covered lot, and beyond was a weathered board fence.
    Emily looked around her for a door to the part of the building that would function as the meeting room for church. There seemed to be none. She concluded that the only entry was from the outside and went around to take a look.
    She knew the building had been used for a billiard room and assumed that it would be spacious.
    The door was a little reluctant to open, but at length Emily was able to push it far enough to crowd her slight body inside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust—and then she shuddered.
    The room was truly a mess. The walls were dark and stained, the windowpanes shattered across the floor, broken chairs strewn here and there, and it looked as if the sparrows were in residence.
    The floor was the worst. It was almost completely covered with litter, and where the wood did show through, it was stained and blotchy. Emily imagined that it had been used freely as a spittoon for as long as the building existed. With another shudder she fled outside. It was too much to deal with at the moment.
    She closed the door tightly and hurried back to her little lodging. The two small rooms and the shed looked good in comparison to what was to be her church.
    “Well,” decided Emily, lifting her shoulders, “if I am to be settled by tonight, I’d best get busy.” She went back to the street and began to laboriously unload her buggy.
    Emily thought about conscripting some of the older children who gathered to watch her to help. After all, their backs were stronger than hers, she was sure. But she held herself in check and kept right on working in the afternoon sun while her little audience continued to grow.
    Across the street, five or six youths lounged against the door of the blacksmith shop watching the goings-on with good humor.“Yeah, I heard rumors’bout someone comin’ to start a mission church,” Emily overheard one of them say, “but I’d no idea that it’d be a woman —and she’d be nothing’ more’n a young girl!” They jostled and teased and winked at one another, while Emily sweated under the weight of her loads.
    Emily carried in all the boxes and bags of supplies and belongings, then the suitcase, and turned in dismay to the remaining trunk. How in the world would she get it off the buggy alone? Her father had had help from a neighbor to load it. She would just have to unload it item by item and leave the trunk itself on the buggy, or else she would have to drive the buggy away with the trunk and its contents still on board, with hopes of getting it unloaded later.
    Deciding on the latter, Emily was turning from the buggy when a voice spoke from behind her.
    “Need some help?” There was a hint of amusement in the tone.
    Emily turned to see two young fellows standing near, their faces slightly red, their eyes twinkling.
    The question caught Emily quite off guard, but a youngster who had been watching the proceedings with interest