The Callender Papers Read Online Free

sit with you.” The pale lips closed. There was no expression on her face or in her eyes as she spoke, as if she were a child rehearsing a set piece.
    I was bewildered. I waited to see if she would stumble into speech again. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.
    â€œWhat will you have for breakfast, Miss Wainwright?”
    â€œMust you call me that?” I asked.
    â€œMiss Jean then. What will you have, Miss Jean? Egg, sausage, porridge, cocoa, rolls, milk, wheatcakes? I don’t know what they serve in the city for breakfast. Mr. Thiel never tells me such things.” The lips closed again.
    â€œOrdinarily I have an egg and toast, with a glass of milk. Would that be all right?”
    â€œOf course it will be all right.” She turned abruptly from me and went into a pantry at the back of the kitchen. I had a minute to look around at the large low-ceilinged room. It was a room with a warm feeling to it, with bright yellow wooden cupboards and scoured wooden countertops. Sunlight poured into it, and the door to the back was opened onto a small porch, showing also the barn and the garden.
    When Mrs. Bywall returned, carrying eggs and a loaf of bread as well as a pitcher, I stood where I had.
    â€œYou just go sit down and wait then. It won’t take but a minute,” Mrs. Bywall told me, without a smile, turning to the old-fashioned wood stove.
    She served the meal on plain stoneware. There was much more food than I was accustomed to. Mrs.Bywall had scrambled several eggs and brought me a basket of sliced bread, three kinds of jam, and a bowl of butter. Milk was poured from the pitcher, and the pitcher left on the table. Mrs. Bywall sat down opposite me, heavily. She watched me eat. I tried to pay no attention.
    â€œIt’s too much,” I apologized when I had eaten as much as I could.
    â€œI’ll learn your appetite,” she said. “I’m not sure what girls eat, so I tried to remember what my brothers ate at your age. They were always hungry. But then, I don’t imagine you’ve ever gone short of food, so perhaps it’s different.”
    â€œIt is all delicious,” I said. It was, fresh and light, the eggs hot, the milk cool.
    Mrs. Bywall looked at me sharply and began to speak, apparently a painful task. “I’ve been in jail,” she announced abruptly. Her eyes were on her hands, clasped together on the tabletop. “I spent ten years in there. There are people would say I’m not fit company for a child. Not Mr. Thiel, not him, but you might think that yourself—” I wanted to answer her then but her voice went on, as if the words had been memorized. “You should know that, Mr. Thiel says. I was sixteen at the time, and my brother was sick, a lunginfection, my brother Horace. He needed medicines and a long stay at a spa in Virginia. My parents were tenant farmers. The farm was small and there had been two bad years. My husband—newly wed I was, to Charlie Bywall, also a farming man—he had nothing to help us with. I went to work at the other house,” she pointed with her chin, down the hill. “And I stole six silver spoons. Sterling silver, they were, from London. I knew it was wrong. But Horace coughed all night. We had to have the money. It was old Dr. Carter, who would give farmers no credit, nor charity.
    â€œMr. Callender prosecuted—Mr. Enoch that is. And I went to jail.” She looked at me then, without really seeing me. “They are terrible places, cruel, unclean. I don’t think of that. It was a long time, ten years. . . . My husband, my Charlie, he left. I never heard from him again. Horace died. My father came to see me, once or twice, but it was too cruel so I asked him to stay away. When I came out—people stayed away from me. I thought of leaving the village. My family. But where would I go? Until Mr. Thiel hired me here. He had had his troubles too, I learned, although