The Librarian of Boone's Hollow - Kim Vogel Sawyer Page 0,60
ain’t been touched with so much as a feather duster for quite a while.” She hadn’t figured this girl would come. She wished now she’d figured different. Already thoughts of sitting in front of the fireplace in the evening, sipping sassafras or catnip tea, and talking the way she and Eagle used to do when day was done were filling her mind. It’d hurt worse’n stubbing a toe to lose the company now. She took a hopeful step into the room. “But it won’t take long for me to tidy it for you.”
Real slow, Adelaide turned until she was looking full into Nanny Fay’s eyes. “It’s a fine room, ma’am. Real fine. I’d like to stay here, but I won’t pay a penny less than two dollars. And I’ll do the tidying myself.”
My, this girl had pride. Stubborn pride, same as Eagle. Nanny Fay chuckled. “I reckon I’d be wastin’ my breath to argue with you.”
“May I move in today?”
She could move in that very hour if she wanted to. “You sure can.”
“Thank you.”
Tears clouded up her vision. Wouldn’t take long and the girl would move out. The folks in town, they’d make it so hard on her she wouldn’t have no other choice, and Nanny Fay wouldn’t hold a grudge against her for it. But for a little while at least, Nanny Fay would have someone besides herself, the birds, and the Good Lord to talk to, the way it’d been when the gal of her heart was still alive.
She sniffed hard and swished her eyes with her apron. “Adelaide Cowherd…thank you.”
Addie
ADDIE WHISKED A PEEK OVER her shoulder. Kermit Gilliam still stood outside the wide doorway of his livery stable, fists on his hips, scowling after her and Miss West. Thank goodness Miss West hadn’t sent her to the livery on her own. Mr. Gilliam proved himself the opposite of Nanny Fay when it came to making business deals. He demanded two dollars a week for the privilege of using one of his horses for a book delivery route. Miss West bargained him down to seventy-five cents, but he wasn’t happy about it. Mostly because Addie had “joined herself with that ol’ herb lady,” as he put it.
They reached the little post office-telephone office, which seemed far enough from the livery that Addie felt confident she could speak without being overheard. After this morning, when she’d experienced the men’s voices carrying all the way up the road, she wondered whether the mountain air had some ability to transport sounds.
“Can you explain something to me, Miss West?”
“What’s that?” The librarian huffed like a steam engine and repeatedly wiped her cheeks and throat with a handkerchief as they walked.
“Nanny Fay was very nice to me.” She envisioned the woman’s round face and pink cheeks, her snow-white hair peeping from the brim of her old-fashioned poke bonnet, her faded blue eyes gazing at Addie the way a child admired a new toy. “And her cabin was as neat as a pin. Why do the people around here dislike her so?”
Miss West gestured Addie through the open library door, then followed her in. She sank into a chair. “For the same reason they aren’t terribly fond of me. Because we don’t hail from Boone’s Hollow.”
Addie sat on the second chair and rested her chin in her hand. Something didn’t quite make sense. “But when you and Mr. Gilliam came for me yesterday, he was friendly at first. He even wanted me to sit on the wagon seat beside him.”
“Of course he did. He’s a man, and you’re a comely young girl. He wanted to impress you.”
Recalling his unexpected sullenness, Addie released a little huff. “He sure changed his mind about that.”
Miss West opened her record book and picked up her pen. “Which shows how closed minded he is. You expressed an interest in residing with Nanny Fay over one of his cohorts, Burke Webber. He couldn’t see, from our point of view, the sensibility of staying with a single woman instead of a single man. Add to that his irrational belief that the old woman is, as Bettina so crassly put it this morning, a witch, and he became downright childish in his actions. His overcharging you for the use of a horse is further proof of his childishness. I suspect if you’d decided to lodge at the Webbers’, he would have let you use one of his horses for twenty-five cents a week.”