banner pasted to its side declaring it belonged to St. William’s Benevolence Society waited there.
Joe continued on with his discussion of Miss Castleton without breaking stride, the dishes in the box rattling as he thudded down the steps. “But that Miss Castleton, she’s the right sort. Though Dr. E keeps ’is feelin’s close as a miser’s purse. Miss Castleton oughta try to break an arm or somethin’ if she wants to get ’im to notice ’er! But then, ’e’s obluvis an’ all. Might not work.”
“Oblivious, Joe,” Rachel said slowly and smiled. “I should not be listening to any more of your gossip, you know.”
The man from the Benevolence Society gestured toward the cart. His hand swept past his thick waist, which strained the buttons of his waistcoat. Clearly, he had never lacked for food or suffered need, unlike those he ministered to.
“In the back here,” he said. “There is space adjacent the other crates.”
“Yeah, we see it. Like we’re blind or somethin’,” muttered Joe.
Rachel set her small box atop the bed while Joe hoisted his box alongside. A wagon moved aside to avoid colliding with them. Rachel hurried out of the street.
“I jes’ wish Mrs. M ’ad picked a better day to be haulin’ our old kitchen goods aroun’. I’ve got work in the dinin’ room polishin’ the silver.”
Joe hopped back toward the house. Another, larger crate waited at the foot of the stairs. He and Rachel had brought it out earlier.
“Jes’ think, miss,” he said, squatting down to grasp hold of the crate. “Pretty soon ya won’ be needin’ to ’aul boxes around. Yer cousin found you a teachin’ position, ’as she?”
“How did you hear about that?” Rachel asked, taking the other side.
“There’s nothin’ what ’appens in this ’ouse doesn’t get spread around like manure in a cattle shed.”
“I’ve no position as yet. But she hopes I shall soon.”
On the count of three, they hoisted the crate in their hands.
Joe shifted its weight and jerked his chin at the handful of neighbors and inquisitive strangers collecting to watch, clotting the pavement with their nosiness. “Wish they’d consider ’elpin’ rather than gawkin’.”
“I doubt they would even contemplate the idea, Joe.”
“Too ’igh and mighty for ’ard work, too, aren’t they all? Cor.”
A tiny girl toting a monstrous basket of apples for sale was forced to walk in the roadway to get around them, the faded and dirty condition of her dress a glaring contrast to the crisp kerseymeres, nankeens, and cambrics.
Rachel’s gaze tracked the girl’s wary path, her heart tugging. “Little girl, do be careful,” she called out. For a moment, the child looked her way.
“Ho!” the man from the Benevolence Society scolded Rachel. “Watch what you’re doing. You’ve almost trod on my foot.”
He gave her an irritated push, and Rachel’s boot heel snagged on a jagged cobblestone, the box jolting from her hands.
“No!” she yelled.
The box crashed onto the street, plates and pots spilling out to roll away, crockery smashing. A man steering a two-wheeled carriage swung wide to evade a battered pewter platter cartwheeling across the cobblestones, lurching into the heavy oncoming traffic. He shouted at someone to watch out.
And then Rachel heard a scream and the whinnying recoil of his horse.
CHAPTER 9
Why have you stopped?” James asked the hackney driver, leaning his head out the window.
“Looks like there’s been an accident.” The man used the butt of his whip to point. “No one’s gettin’ through there.”
A tangle of horses and wagons and people blocked passage. Someone was trying to back up a cart to turn around and ran into a hitching post at the side of the street. Raised voices rumbled down the roadway, bounced off the sides of the houses, and mixed with the staccato clatter of hooves on cobblestone. A policeman trotted past.
James grabbed his medical bag and unlatched the door. “They might need my help. We’re close enough to my house as it is. I’ll get out here.”
He tossed the driver his fare and headed up the road. The worst of the mess looked to be located outside his front door.
James started jogging.
He heard Mrs. Mainprice’s voice before he saw her thundering down his front steps, an old blue blanket in her hands. “Make some room for the lass, will you?”
James shoved aside two scruffy boys, crossing sweepers he recognized from over on Knightsbridge, who had come running to take advantage of the confusion and try their hands at picking pockets of the unsuspecting. “Get away before I summon the constable over there.”
A seam formed