Beyond All Measure (20 page)

Ada scanned the rest of the page, skimming stories about farm prices, the upcoming market days, and changes in the Hickory Ridge railway schedule. A small story at the bottom of the page caught her eye. “Why I Love Founders Day, by James Boleyn, Age 10.”

“You’re letting children write for the paper now?”

Patsy grinned. “That was Bea Goldston’s idea. She thought the students might work harder at their lessons if they knew they might be published. Last spring she assigned this essay, and I picked the best one to run in the Founders Day issue. Bea isn’t the most pleasant woman in town, but give her some credit—this was a brilliant idea.” She bumped the file cabinet drawer closed with her hip. “I’m thinking of making it a regular feature when school opens again. It’ll give the students something to work for, and help sell papers too. Mrs. Boleyn bought ten copies of this issue to send to all their kin.”

She peered at Ada. “I haven’t known you very long, but I’m a pretty good judge of what people are thinking. And right now, I’d say you’ve got a new idea running around in your head.”

Ada nodded. “There’s a child at the orphanage who’s part colored and—”

“I know the one you mean. I saw you with her at Founders Day.”

“She’s very bright but barred from the school. Mrs. Lowell teaches her a bit, I think, but Sophie doesn’t have the same chances as the others. She loves telling stories. I’m wondering if you would—”

“Publish one of hers?” Patsy considered this. “I don’t see why not. If it meets my standards.”

“Thank you, Patsy. That would be wonderful for her.”

Patsy peered over her spectacles. “She’ll have to do the work, mind you. I can’t play favorites. Betsy Terwilliger is already up in arms because I didn’t pick her granddaughter’s essay.”

“Of course she’ll do the work.” Ada handed the paper back. “Now, I must go. Thank you for your help.”

She left the
Gazette
and continued down the street to Norah’s Fine Frocks to find Carrie Daly waiting for her. Today Carrie wore a simple gingham dress with a ruffled hem and a green felt spoon bonnet. Both had clearly seen better days, but the soft colors made Carrie look ten years younger.

“Oh, Ada, there you are!” She led Ada to a display by the window. “I thought I’d missed you.”

“I had some business at the newspaper office.” Ada dropped her bag onto a little settee and studied the dress on the mannequin in the window. “Is this the one you have in mind?”

Norah bustled in from her storeroom in the back and stopped dead still. Ada turned away and pretended to study a pink embroidered shawl in the window. Even though she was the one who had been wronged that day at the picnic, she felt embarrassed and awkward, and sorry for her angry retort.

Norah busied herself behind the counter, rearranging a display of gloves and parasols. Finally she caught Ada’s eye. “I owe you an apology, I reckon, for what I said on Founders Day. About Yankees. I didn’t mean it—not about you personally. You’re not a liar or a thief. I got caught up in the conversation and it slipped out.”

Ada nodded. “I’m sorry, too, for what I said.”

Norah’s face turned red. “Well. So. I’ve got to unpack some new merchandise in the back. Carrie, give a holler if you need anything. And remember, I can make a dress to order if you can’t find anything you like.”

“Thank you, Norah.” Carrie took a pale blue dress from the open clothes press beside the door. “I love this one, Ada. But Bea says I’m getting too long in the tooth for such frilly things. What do you think?”

“I think you should ignore Bea and get whatever makes you happy. This one looks fine to me. And I know just the hat to go with it.”

Quickly, she sketched a leghorn toque covered in filmy netting, with double streamers off the back. “I can trim it in the same color blue as the dress if you like.”

“It’s beautiful! How much?”

“My offer still stands, Carrie. I want to do this for you. No charge.”

“It’s sweet of you, but Bea says you’re practically destitute. Not to be nosy or anything, but can you afford to be so generous?”

She couldn’t. Not by a long shot. But a promise was a promise, and her pride was at stake. “It’ll be my contribution to your new beginning.”

“Well, if you’re sure.” Carrie smoothed the folds of the new dress, her eyes glowing.

“I’m sure.” Ada patted her friend’s arm. “Only please don’t let it get around town that I’m giving away hats. One day I’ll have to make a living from them.”

Carrie pressed a finger to her lips. “I won’t say a word! And thank you, Ada. I don’t know what else to say.”

Ada left Carrie to try on the dress and headed outside. The clock at the railway station read half past twelve when she spotted Wyatt emerging from the telegraph office. She waved and waited for him outside the mercantile. A whistle blew as a train chugged into the station.

“Train’s half an hour late today,” he observed, stepping up beside her. “You must have had a busy morning. I looked for you earlier, but you seemed to have disappeared. I wondered whether you’d struck out for home again on your own.”

She shook her head. She was wiser now and, besides, her old shoes didn’t have another seven miles in them. “I opened an account at the bank and met Carrie Daly at the dress shop.” She held his gaze. “And I canceled my ad in the
Gazette
.”

Despite her regret at losing her only means of advertising, she felt the weight of her long-festering guilt lifting from her shoulders. But there was more to tell him before she would feel truly free. She took a deep breath as if bracing for a plunge into icy water. “I need this job, but I care too much about your good opinion to lie to you.”

Briefly she described the orders she’d taken in rapid succession from Carrie, Bea, and Molly Scott. He listened, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable.

“I didn’t expect so many orders so soon,” she finished. “Everything has happened all at once.”

“Looks that way all right.” He tossed his packages into the rig.

She hurried on. “That night on the river I was going to tell you that I hadn’t yet canceled my ad, but we were interrupted when Lillian—”

His expression softened. At last he smiled. “I’ve been regretting that interruption ever since.”

Relief and happiness welled up inside her. “You aren’t angry with me?”

“I’m not thrilled about it, and I still think you’re biting off more than you can chew, but I’m willing to give it a try, see how it goes.”

“Thank you. You have no idea what this means to me.”

He nodded. “I’m hungry. How about some fried chicken?”

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to stop at the mercantile first.”

“Fine. I’ll check with Nate at the bookshop. Sage had a good idea about that knotty pine. Nate’s going to take a lot of it off my hands. I’ll meet you at Hattie’s in . . . half an hour?”

He loped across the street, dodging a buckboard. A skinny yellow dog trotted over to the post office and curled into a ball in the shade, eyeing Ada as she passed. She entered the mercantile, hoping that Jasper Pruitt’s clerk would be there to assist her, but it was the storekeeper himself who looked up from his work when the bell over his door jingled.

She nodded to him and headed to the back where the fabrics and sewing notions were kept. She gathered spools of thread, some ribbons, and a card of pearl buttons, happier than she had felt since her arrival. She couldn’t believe Wyatt had given his blessing to her enterprise. What had caused him to change his mind?

She needed more felt for Molly’s hat and reluctantly summoned Jasper to cut it from the heavy bolt of fabric on a shelf above her head. He spat a stream of tobacco juice into the spittoon beside the door and lumbered toward the back, shears in hand.

“How much you need?”

“One yard, please.”

He lifted the bolt, laid it on the cutting table, and proceeded to lop off a portion.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pruitt.” She rummaged in her bag. “I have a tape measure. I’ll just—”

“Are you accusing me of cheatin’ you, Yankee girl?” He squinted at her. Tobacco juice trickled from the corner of his mouth into his thick beard.

“Of course not! I’d think you’d want to measure too.”

“Been doing this since I was a boy. I know what a yard looks like.”

“Fine. I won’t argue with you.” She dropped her tape measure into her bag.

“What a relief. You Yankees think you know everything. You don’t know nothin’.” His hard, black gaze bore into her hers. “Especially about how things are down here. I’d watch myself if I were you.”

“I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about.”

“I saw you on Founders Day.” His shears made a snicking sound as they slid through the fabric. “Running around with that girl from Miz Lowell’s.”

Ada bristled. “It’s no concern of yours.”

He folded the cloth and returned the bolt to the shelf. “See, Yankee, that’s where you’re dead wrong. When strangers come to our town and start tryin’ to change the natural order of things, I make it my business.”

“The natural order of things?”

“Whites have their place and blacks have theirs. Long as ever’body knows which is which, things progress the way they’re supposed to.”

She glared at him. “Oh, with whites in charge and the blacks at their mercy. Isn’t that what you mean, Mr. Pruitt?”

She gathered the cloth and sewing notions, quickly found soap, a bottle of rosewater, and a tin of celluloid hairpins, and took them to the counter.

Jasper Pruitt spat another stream of foul-smelling tobacco juice. “You owe me three dollars, and . . . lessee, eighty-six cents. Cash.”

Her stomach churned with anger, but she kept her expression pleasant. She handed him the money, took up her purchases, and hurried toward the front of the store.

“And good day to you too,” she muttered as the door slammed shut behind her.

EIGHTEEN

“Ada, come sit by me.” Carrie patted the empty chair next to her.

Ada took her place across from Lillian, Bea, and Mariah and dug her thimble and needles from her bag. Lillian was already busy, sorting through squares of calico and denim. The ladies were making quilts for a boy and his sister who had been orphaned when their parents’ mule team spooked, sending their buckboard into the river. Outside the open window, a couple of noisy jays flitted among leaves just beginning to color. A bushy-tailed squirrel danced along the high branches, scolding the jays.

Ada smiled at his antics. Today, despite her constant worries about money, she was suffused with a rare sense of well-being. She had hats to make. And working on the quilts, making something beautiful and useful out of what had been worn out and discarded, gave her a feeling of accomplishment.

The women quickly finished piecing the quilt top. They attached it to the quilting frame and then began sewing it to the backing, their needles moving rhythmically through the colorful cloth. “Bea,” Carrie began, “do tell! What is the new headmaster like? Do the children like him?”

“He’s all right. He wants to impress the children, the older boys especially, with his authority. But his credentials are first-rate.” Bea reached into her basket for another spool of thread. “We’re offering Latin this term, and we’re planning a course in higher mathematics next year.”

“And our church Christmas pageant?” Mariah drew her needle through the fabric. “Will he help with that?”

Bea laughed. “Hardly! He thinks pageants are a woman’s domain—beneath the attention of a distinguished Virginia scholar such as himself.”

“At least he agreed to teach all the children today, so you could come here,” Lillian said. “That says something for his character.”

“I suppose.” Bea huffed. “But I must say, Ethan Webster has quite a high opinion of himself.”

Mariah rolled her eyes. Ada smiled at her across the quilt frame.

“I suppose Mr. Webster must attend the church in town,” Carrie said. “I haven’t seen him here.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Bea threaded her needle. “I’m tired of talking about him.” She glanced at Ada. “I’d much rather talk about our hats.”

“Me too,” Mariah said. “What about it, Ada?”

“Yours is almost finished, Mariah. I can bring it next week if you like.”

“I can’t wait!” Mariah stood and went to the cupboard, where she pulled out glasses and filled them with apple cider.

“What about
my
hat?” Bea’s expression clearly indicated she thought hers was more important. “You haven’t even taken my measurements yet.”

Ada suppressed a sigh. She set down her glass, pulled out her tape measure, and jotted down Bea’s measurement in her sketchbook. They were discussing Bea’s preferences when Lillian plopped her empty glass onto the table. “
Some
people in this room have forgotten why we’re here. There are two little children whose feet are going to freeze if we don’t get these quilts done. I, for one, do not want that on my conscience.”

“Coming, Lillian.” Bea murmured to Ada, “We can talk about my hat later, but I want it as soon as possible.”

The ladies worked until midafternoon. At last they removed the quilt from its frame, packed up their work, and went out to their rigs. Bea turned for town; Mariah climbed onto the Whitings’ buckboard and headed for the mill. Ada helped Lillian into their rig and clicked her tongue. “Get up, Smoky.”

The horse, accustomed at last to her voice, tossed his head and plodded onto the road. Ada urged the horse homeward.

When they pulled up to Lillian’s barn, Ada watered Smoky, then left him in the barn with a bag of oats and a promise that Wyatt would arrive soon to remove his harness. Returning to the house, she removed her hat and tied an apron over her dress. She had promised Wyatt a pot of Louisiana gumbo, the one dish she’d learned to perfection from her mother’s New Orleans cousins.

While Lillian rested, Ada made the roux and added the okra and seasonings, and set the pot on the stove to simmer. She started a pot of rice and set a pan of cornbread in the oven to bake.

The mantel clock chimed. Ada glanced up. Wyatt wouldn’t arrive for another hour, and Lillian had fallen asleep. There was time to start work on Carrie’s hat. She spread her supplies on the table, lit the lamp, and pinned the pattern to the fabric, smoothing the thin paper with her fingers.