Sins of a Shaker Summer Read Online Free Page A

more experimentation? She had certainly lost contact with work assignments since leaving the trustee position in Andrew’s hands.
    Rose emerged from the staircase leading back to the kitchen, startling the kitchen sisters hard at work beginning preparations for the evening meal. The huge cast-iron stove was unlit; given the heat, the meal was to be cold and light—a large salad, iced potato soup, pickles, and bread.
    â€œSorry, Gertrude, I didn’t mean to pop out at you so suddenly,” Rose said, as the Kitchen Deaconess squeaked and hopped backward at seeing her.
    â€œGoodness,” Gertrude said, fanning her flushed face with a large hand. “Goodness, goodness. What were you doing down in the root cellar? There’s almost nothing down there now but blessedly cool air. Honestly, I’ve been wantingto move the kitchen downstairs before we all melt into puddles on the floor.” Before the last words were out of her mouth, Gertrude had spun back to the large worktable and begun ripping chunks of greens into a bowl. The lettuce had bolted in the heat, so she was using mustard greens and young cabbage. Rose selected a cabbage and began to help.
    â€œI wondered if Nora and Betsy had by any chance been playing downstairs, perhaps with some herbs from the medic garden or something else that might have made them sick.”
    â€œNay, I don’t think so,” Gertrude said. “At least, we’ve never seen or heard them. Someone would have told me.”
    â€œWill you ask the others for me?”
    â€œCertainly.”
    Rose gathered a handful of curly mustard greens and ripped them into bite-sized pieces. “I noticed some interesting new jellies downstairs,” she said.
    â€œAren’t they lovely?” Gertrude said.
    â€œAndrew’s idea?”
    â€œCertainly not! Andrew has no interest in culinary herbs. He’s even using more of the herb crop for medicines and leaving us less for cooking than we used to have, and I, for one, am quite disappointed. We Believers are known for our cooking, and we’ve always sold wonderfully flavorful herbs to hotels all over, haven’t we? Well, I just thought I’d show him a thing or two about our cooking herbs. Those new jellies came from us, the kitchen sisters. We all put our heads together and came up with some very tasty ideas, if you’ll forgive us our pride.” The last was said with a quick glance at Rose, who smiled to show there was nothing to forgive.
    â€œHas Patience shown any interest in culinary herbs?”
    â€œThat one? Not likely. She isn’t interested in anything but her precious experiments. And those so-called gifts of hers, of course.” Again she darted an uncertain glance at Rose, who was in a quandary. She wanted all the informationshe could get about the Medicinal Herb Shop workers, but she would be condoning gossip. With reluctance and a stinging conscience, she decided that information, just now, was more important than living as the angels.
    â€œYou think her gifts are false?” she asked.
    Gertrude sniffed. “I shouldn’t judge, I know, but it just doesn’t seem right to me. She isn’t the sort of person Holy Mother Wisdom would endow with gifts, that’s my opinion. She’s . . . she’s mean-spirited.”
    â€œWhy do you say that?”
    Gertrude’s lips hardened into a straight line, and she ripped away at her cabbage as if it had to be killed before it could be eaten. To Rose’s surprise and dismay, a row of tears gathered along her bottom eyelids. “I’m very proud of this kitchen, and my kitchen sisters, and all the work we do. Why, without our work, this Society wouldn’t even survive, would it?”
    â€œNay, it would not.”
    â€œWell, I was so proud of the inventive new recipes the sisters and me came up with, and I was telling Patience about them, and you know what she said? She said we were