Pieces of Dreams Read Online Free Page B

bore the McDougall name, it was Lydia who kept the place going.
    “Where's Caleb?” Biddy asked, glancing toward the boarding house then back down the street behind them in the direction of the livery stable.
    “I'm not too sure he's going to make it, either,” Melly said with a wry grimace.
    “I thought I saw him heading out early this morning in a wagon.”
    Melly nodded. “He drove out to the Bedgood estate sale. He said he might run late, especially if they parcel out the house furnishings before they get to the tools and animals.”
    “You should have gone with him,” Lydia put in from Melly's other side.
    “I did suggest it,” Melly answered with an unhappy shrug. “But Caleb thought it might cause talk if we were caught on the road together after dark.”
    “Yes, I suppose,” Lydia answered.
    Biddy, however, did not look convinced, nor was Melly herself. It was sweet of Caleb to be concerned for her good name, but she would have enjoyed the outing, not to mention the opportunity to search out some of the many things she would need to set up housekeeping.
    It might also have been more flattering if he had been less insistent on avoiding gossip. As a bridegroom, he was supposed to be anxious to be alone with her, wasn't he?
    No, she told herself, she must not think that way. It was not that Caleb didn’t want her with him, or that he didn't desire her. He just always knew the right thing to do and did it no matter the cost to himself.
    Melly gazed down the street toward the river. She could see the front of the livery stable at street’s end, near the landing, with the house this side of it where Caleb and Conrad had been brought up. There was no sign of Caleb's wagon, no movement anywhere in the vicinity if you didn't count the hound scratching its fleas near the stable door.
    Nor was there any sign of Conrad.
    On the other side of the street, a couple of men sat shooting the bull, balancing on straight chairs that were rocked back against the wall of the steamboat office. Just back this way, the milliner, Miss Tate, was pulling down the blinds on the front windows of her shop next door to the mercantile. Further along, past the turning for Hickory Street, the elderly doctor came out of the frame building that served as his office, hospital and home. He waited until his wife joined him, and then escorted her in the direction of the church with a hand in the middle of her wide back. As the two passed, they called a pleasant good evening across the street.
    The three young women returned the greeting, then turned by common consent and followed after the older couple.
    The church that marked the opposite end of Main Street was of white clapboard with windows of stained glass and a steeple surmounted by a lightning rod. The young bachelor preacher, who had taken the place of their previous pastor back in the spring, stood greeting his parishioners on the steps. He could not be considered particularly handsome, having craggy features and the stooped shoulders of a scholar, but was so kind and possessed such dry, self-deprecating humor that he was universally well-liked. Some of the congregation would have preferred more threats of eternal damnation in his sermons, but Melly enjoyed his erudite expositions on good and evil followed by polite benedictions.
    As they paused near the steps to allow elderly Mrs. Pollack, who had a crooked back, to mount slowly ahead of them, Lydia leaned to whisper, “Did you know Esther has been walking out with the reverend?”
    Melly gave a quick nod. “I saw them strolling along the river levee last Sunday afternoon. Isn't it lovely?”
    “Oh, do you think so?”
    “Don't you? It was what I was hoping for when she started teaching Sunday school after her mother died. She would make a grand pastor's wife.”
    “Well, she adores children,” Biddy said, frowning, “but don't you think she's had enough drabness in her life?”
    Melly bit the inside of her bottom lip as she