As Lily was leaving, Mrs. Templeton turned suddenly and called after her. She had a piece of paper in her hand. “I almost forgot: Maurice and I are holding meeting here in a week, we’ll need a few extras, delivered early in the morning if that’s all right.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lily’s eyes were fastened on the fluttering note.
“There’s so many things, I wrote them all down for you. Here, take this along.”
Lily took the paper, turned and was almost under the rose arbour when Mrs. Templeton said, a bit too quickly, “Oh Lily, would you mind checking, do I have cucumbers on that list?”
Lily froze. She felt the confiding coziness of the morning ebb away.
“Just take a quick glance at the list, love.” Mrs. Templeton prompted, but kindly
Lily looked sideways then directly to Mrs. Templeton. “I can’t,” she said tonelessly.
“Well then, it’s high time we did something about that!”
Lily desperately wanted to be present when Bridie and Mrs. Templeton had their tête à tête. A letter in an engraved envelope had been delivered right to their door by a suborned errand-boy. Bridie read it, her brow furrowing, her lips mouthing the words. “Some nerve!” But next morning she and Lily scoured the house and, to Lily’s amazement, a pewter tea-service materialized from the steamer-trunk to be set upon a crocheted tablecloth of ancient but unblemished vintage. Then she and Uncle Chester – only one of them protesting – were banished to the barn.
Bridie was a good reader, Chester said so many times. But there were no books in evidence in their home. Lily did see her aunt reading, though, for each week she picked up The Canadian Observer and brought it home, taking special pains to read it on the Sabbath. Chester would peek at it occasionally but would say to Lily, “It’s full of radical ranting, girl, an’ bad politics that’ll come to no good end.” He sigh with the feigned resignation he used whenever Bridie’s behavior frustrated him. “It’s beyond me why she takes in that stuff. ’Course, you gotta remember where she come from.”
Lily couldn’t remember what she didn’t know. Bridie wouldn’t talk about the old country. Chester would, after a slug or two from his cache in Benjamin’s stall, about the Ramsbottom tribe in Lancashire, the innumerable cousins he’d never met, his own history as the only child of a shipwright attached to the military command during the Simcoe regime, the premature deaths of his parents from cholera. The Ramsbottoms, however legendary, were not blood.
“Don’t ask,” Auntie would say, seeing the tilt of Lily’s chin. “The Old Country’s old, it’s only good for forgettin’. This is the here and now and that’s what’s important.”
Seeing Lily’s disappointment, Chester slipped into his bedroom, opened the trunk with a squeal that arched Bridie’s’s eyebrows, and returned with a large leather-bound book. “I’ll just read her the story parts,” he said in Bridie’s direction. “It’s her right, you know,” he added vehemently though his voice didn’t sound fully confident until Samson had pushed both columns aside and brought the wicked temple down upon himself.
The next winter Chester grew bolder and brought out a calf-covered novel called The Last of the Mohicans, from which he read aloud to Lily, curled up on his lap in the armchair, all through that dark, cold season. Last winter, when The Deerslayer made its debut, Lily perched on the ample arm of the chair and followed the words on the page. Soon she was able to point to some of the words and repeat them back. “See, Bridie love, the young lady can read. Smart as a whip, she is.”
Bridie, who appeared not to be listening, snapped, “Don’t be turnin’ her head, you old fool. She can’t read. Soon as I get some time, soon as everybody around here pulls their weight, I’m gonna teach the child to read properly.”
“Don’t blame the girl,” he said petulantly. “After all, she’s had no educatin’ to speak of.”
“An’ never willwith the likes of you around her.” The reading was over for that evening.
When Lily ventured in to see if Bridie and Mrs Templeton were still talking, she found Mrs. Templeton adjusting her Sunday hat and looking quite pleased with herself. “Thanks for the tea, Bridie. You really must let me return the hospitality soon.”
In her working smock, Lily felt smudged and unworthy, but Mrs. Templeton kissed her warmly on the cheek. Bridie smoothed her skirt and said to Lily: “It’s all fixed. You’ll start in at the Common School first thing next Monday.”
Lily turned her shining face to Mrs. Templeton. “Don’t thank me, young lady. Thank your Aunt; she’s givin’ up the best helper she’s got.”
Bridie wanted to be severe but couldn’t manage it.
Her aunt had argued for starting in September when the new term began. After all, only one week remained in the current school year. “This way,” Mrs. Templeton had insisted, “she can try it out, introduce herself to Miss Pringle, and get set up for the fall term.” What she really meant was that it would be cruel to let a girl of Lily’s temperament wait in uncertainty over a whole summer.
“Only if Chester’ll help out with the weedin’,” Bridie had countered. Fortunately Chester’s troublesome back took a turn for the better, and dressed in a brown-and-tan gingham especially cut down by Bridie and with a lunch-pail in hand, Lily set off for Port Sarnia.
The Monday-morning sun had risen full of hope, then retreated. An east wind brought dark clouds prophesying thunder, and worse. The rain gusted sideways at Lily, who was torn between sheltering in the bush by the road or being late for school. Mrs. Templeton had made the arrangements; Lily was expected. Using her thin broadcloth shawl as deftly as she could, Lily manoeuvred her way through the squalls and mud into the open streets of the town. She was soaked through to the skin. Even her petticoat, improvised from a plain calico skirt, was sodden. Her boots were wet and plastered with grime that splashed up to her ankles and soiled the hem of her dress. Lily gritted her teeth and wedged her right cheek into the rain.
When she got to the schoolhouse on George Street, the sun was making a comeback. No children skipped or cavorted in the grounds. Lily paused at the door about to knock when a large boy with a pimple on his nose opened it, and called back: “It’s the new girl, Miss Pringle! Looks like she’s fallen in Durand’s Pond!”
A gale of laughter greeted Lily as she entered the room, her shawl dripping. Standing at the front behind a table, Miss Pringle – frightfully tall, angular, eyes overly brilliant like a starved cat’s – slammed her fuller down. “Behave yourselves, class,” she shouted an octave above normal. “Remember, you’re young ladies and gentlemen.”
The ragtaggles and strays among this motley group of ages and sexes were not taken in: ladies-and-gentlemen-to-be went to the Grammar School on Christina Street. When the hubbub had died of its own weight, Miss Pringle said, “Please hang your cloak on the nail to your right, and take a seat. Class, say hello to our new pupil, Miss Lily Ramsbottom.”
The surname had barely left Miss Pringle’s lips when three or four unsynchronized snorts were heard, followed by girlish giggles. “That’s enough!” bellowed Miss Pringle. “We don’t make fun of people’s names no matter how odd they may be.”
Lily sat down at an empty place on the bench that held three other girls who might have been her age. Her gingham, still sopping, clung to her. The dark-haired girl next to her edged away.
“Have you attended school elsewhere?” Miss Pringle asked sweetly, not leaving her post.
“No, ma’am. This is my first time.”
Miss Pringle paused, her gasp communicated instantly to the class. “Then what on earth are you doing sitting with the Fourth Book?” she snapped with more satisfaction than the