The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter (8 page)

Mrs. Kingston seemed to read her thoughts, for she said, “I informed no one that I was embarking upon anything other than my daily walk. Whatever we happen to discuss, I will keep to myself.”

“Thank you,” Mercy said, letting out a relieved breath. “I believe he’s still in the hay barn patching a hole in the loft.”

After Mrs. Kingston replaced her bonnet, they walked out toward the barnyard together. Faint hammering sounds drifted from that direction. The cows were all out to pasture, having been milked earlier in the morning. Mercy found herself wishing her brothers had been sent out to pasture as well, for as each caught sight of Mrs. Kingston, he stopped his chores to stare. Oram, who was supposed to be scrubbing milking pails, gaped with his jaw hung so low that Mercy worried it might lock. Harold was rude enough to look up from the post hole he was digging and say, “Papa’s too busy for comp’ny, Mercy.”

Mercy ignored him, and miraculously, he did not press the issue. At the barnyard gate she turned to Mrs. Kingston and said apologetically, “You’d best wait here. I’ll see if Papa will come down.”

Mrs. Kingston sent a doubtful glance back at Harold, who now stood glowering at both of them with hands upon hips. Fixing Mercy with her frank blue eyes, she said, “I don’t wish to inconvenience your father, Miss Sanders. It will defeat my purpose in coming here if he becomes angry.”

That’s likely to happen anyway
, Mercy thought.

“Why don’t you lead me to him?”

Mercy would have argued had she not the feeling that Mrs. Kingston was not one to be discouraged so easily. Instead, she nodded down at the woman’s shoes.

“You’ll need to watch your step in there, ma’am.” As if to illustrate her point, a shovelful of muck flew from the open door of the milking barn only ten feet away. “Dale is sluicing out the stalls,” Mercy explained, highly embarrassed.

Mrs. Kingston was already gathering the folds of her skirt with both hands and smiled reassuringly. “I didn’t expect your cows to be wearing nappies, Miss Sanders. Just lead the way, and we’ll be fine.”

The hammering sounds increased as the two gingerly made their way across the barnyard. Six feet away from the barn, Mercy stopped and cupped her hands to her mouth. “Papa?”

There was no answer, so she tried again a little louder. This time the hammering ceased, and a grunt floated down from the open hayloft door. It likely was his way of saying
what?
but could just as well translate into
go away!
or
this board is too heavy!
She gave Mrs. Kingston a helpless look, then raised her hands to her mouth again.

“Would you please come to the door, Papa?”

This time he actually articulated words from the recesses of the loft. “What for?”

Mercy sighed. Why did everything in her family have to be so difficult? “There’s a Mrs. Kingston here to see you.”

“Who?”

Before Mercy could reply, she felt a touch on her shoulder. “Allow me, dear. We can’t have you damaging that lovely singing voice.” Then raising her chin, the woman called out shrilly, “Octavia Kingston, Mr. Sanders! Would you be so kind as to allow me a word with you?”

There was a brief silence, in which Mercy could picture her father trying to place the name. And then, “Is this about thet school?”

“It is indeed, Mr. Sanders. How very perceptive of you!”

This time the grunt that issued from above had a distinctive familiar ring. Mercy felt her cheeks grow hot, and she prayed that the woman beside her hadn’t figured out what he had actually said. But Mrs. Kingston seemed to be concentrating on something else, for after listening to the resumed hammering with pursed lips, she turned to Mercy and said, “Tell me, how does one get up there?”

“You want to climb up in the loft?”

“Frankly, dear, I am not looking forward to it. But there seems to be no other way.”

With great misgivings Mercy led the older woman through the wide open barn door. Just inside, Mrs. Kingston paused. “Will you close and bolt that door?” She glanced down at her skirt. “Modesty, you know.”

Mercy complied at once, plunging the barn into darkness save for the daylight seeping through the cracks between the door boards. After allowing a second or two for Mrs. Kingston’s eyes to adjust to the dimness, Mercy pointed to a ladder. She felt compelled to give another warning at the bottom. “He may swear at you.”

Mrs. Kingston again gathered her skirts about her knees, then lifted her foot to the first rung. “I’ll box his ears if he does.”

After the initial shock had passed, Mercy smiled to herself, gathered her skirts, and followed. Perhaps this woman would be a match for her father after all. This was much more interesting than picking vegetables.

“Would one of you gentlemen mind lending me a hand?” she heard Mrs. Kingston say, whose head and shoulders had disappeared into the floor of the loft. Mercy listened to the hammering cease and cringed at the expected explosion of words, but to her surprise, none came. Perhaps Mrs. Kingston’s tenacity had rendered her papa speechless.

“Help her, Fernie,” she even heard her father mutter, and Mrs. Kingston’s feet presently disappeared. Her father and brother did not extend the same courtesy to Mercy when she reached the top of the ladder, but she had played up here hundreds of times as a girl and easily swung herself to the floor. Papa was on his knees staring, openmouthed, as Mrs. Kingston brushed stray bits of straw from her sleeves and surveyed the stacked bales of new hay as if they were fine furnishings.

“Your cattle will be nourished all winter, I can see. How wise of you to provide for them, Mr. Sanders.”

Her father sent Mercy a look that would have set her to trembling had she been younger. Fernie resembled a kitten watching a pendulum as he shifted his attention from his papa to this visitor, and then back again.

“Just like the biblical ant, storing for the lean times,” Mrs. Kingston was saying. “Some things never change, do they? I find that very reassuring.”

“I ain’t gonter send the boys to thet school,” Mercy’s papa finally glowered.

“No?”

“No!” He jabbed in the direction of the ladder with his hammer. “So’s you may as well go away.”

Mrs. Kingston merely shrugged her regal shoulders. “Very well then, Mr. Sanders. I can see it’s useless to attempt to change your mind.” Turning back to Mercy, she said, “Would you mind helping me with those top rungs, dear?”

As her father expressed his contempt with a resumed barrage of hammering on the patched floor, Mercy lowered herself by four rungs and then held out both hands toward Mrs. Kingston. The elderly woman leaned down as if she would take them but then straightened again.

“Oh, by the way, Mr. Sanders.”

Mercy’s father held the hammer poised above his repair work. He directed a grunt toward Mrs. Kingston, but mercifully it did not sound like any recognizable profanity.

“Would you happen to know of anyone in the market for a cow?”

“What?” he growled.

“Silly woman that I am, I happened to come into possession of a fine heifer from Mr. Fletcher of Arnold Lane this morning, and I don’t quite know what to do with her. You see, I reside at the
Larkspur
and—”

Sitting back on his heels, he said in a disbelieving voice, “Mr. Fletcher sold
you
one of his cows?”

“Actually, we made a trade. You see, my morning rambles take me down almost every lane in Gresham. On Thursdays I pass their farm and have had the privilege of making the acquaintance of Mr. Fletcher and his lovely wife. I’m not surprised you’ve heard of them. Their herd—”

“The finest milk producers in Shropshire!” Mercy’s father interrupted again. “But Fletcher won’t sell to nobody, the stingy—”

“As I made mention, it was a trade.” Mrs. Kingston picked another bit of straw from her sleeve.

Mercy could read her father’s thoughts as he studied the woman standing at his hayloft ladder. To have such an animal among his herd would result in some outstanding calves one day, thereby increasing milk production considerably in just a few years.

“I don’t suppose you’d be willin’ to sell her to me, would you?” It was a statement, not a question, for clearly he was beginning to understand that she had some other motive in mind.

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Sanders.”

His green eyes formed slits. “What do you want, Mrs. …”

“Kingston,” she supplied. “I believe you already know the answer to that.”

“Thet school,” he said resignedly.

She smiled. “A little education never hurt anyone, Mr. Sanders.”

It was with a sense of great awe that Mercy accompanied the woman back through the barnyard. Finally when the gate was behind them, she sent out a long breath. “You knew you could make him change his mind, didn’t you?”

“Why, of course not, Miss Sanders,” Mrs. Kingston replied. “I’m not a prophet. I’m just as surprised as you are.” But the look in her blue eyes said otherwise.

Mercy smiled. She had seen something remarkable this morning—an elderly woman had accomplished what four men couldn’t.

She beckoned to Oram, who came trotting over right away and gladly accepted the responsibility of driving the visitor back to town. Handling the team and wagon was more enjoyable than scrubbing milk pails any day. “My papa doesn’t believe women should drive,” Mercy explained after Oram had hitched up Dan and Bob, the two speckled drays, to the wagon. “Or I would take you back myself.”

“That’s quite all right, dear.” Mrs. Kingston allowed Oram to help her up into the seat beside him, then she patted his shoulder. “I do appreciate this young man saving me from that long walk.”

“Yes’m,” Oram mumbled. But before he could pick up the reins, Mercy stepped toward the wagon again.

“May I ask what you traded Mr. Fletcher for the cow?”

Mrs. Kingston smiled down at her. “Certainly you may, Miss Sanders. It was a bicycle.”

“You have a bicycle?”

“You’ve heard of them, haven’t you?”

Mercy nodded. She had seen an advertisement for one in an issue of
The Sunday Visitor
at the lending library. But she had never seen one on the lanes of Gresham.

“I haven’t actually taken possession of it yet,” Mrs. Kingston went on to explain. “Mr. Fletcher is well aware of that and knows I’m good for it. You see, my son, Norwood, has written that he’s sending one for my birthday next week.”

“Happy birthday,” Mercy said, and Mrs. Kingston smiled.

“Thank you, dear.” She shook her head. “Now, no doubt you’re wondering why someone would send a sixty-four-year-old woman a bicycle. Norwood is obviously under the impression that, as much as I enjoy my morning walks, I would enjoy peddling along at breakneck speed even more so. I dare not send back his gift for fear of injuring his feelings, but I shan’t go gadding about on a contraption that looks like something out of a medieval torture chamber. And if I were to keep it at the
Larkspur
, the Hollis children would no doubt ask to ride it, thereby risking their lives and limbs.”

Mercy smiled. “Then it was good that Mr. Fletcher wanted a bicycle.”

“Isn’t it, dear?” Mrs. Kingston smiled again. “And I find people much more agreeable when there is something they want.”

As easy as stealing a drunk man’s purse
, thought Mrs. Kingston, who would of course never actually
do
such a thing. And her conscience was quite clear about it all, for she had made no promises regarding Mr. Fletcher’s heifer producing more milk than any other cow in Mr. Sanders’ herd.

She smiled to herself and waved away a curious bee with a slow motion of her hand. It was odd that she, who had no experience with dairying, would have figured out what the rest of Gresham considered a big mystery. She had simply put two and two together one Sunday morning in church, or rather added one incident with another to form a theory.

The first incident had been Mr. Fletcher’s rendition of “Come, Thou Almighty King” in the choir gallery. There was nothing unusual about that, as the self-educated Mr. Fletcher often played his violin before the church. Clearly he loved the instrument, for his eyes closed and rapture filled his expression as the bow swept across the strings. Even the children ceased to fidget when the sweet strains of his music floated out among the congregation.