A Prologue To Love Read Free

turned her thoughts determinedly to the mystery which was John Ames and his little daughter Caroline. She had been with the family for five years and knew almost as little now as she had known on the evening of her arrival. She received eight dollars a month as an assistant to old Kate, who no longer could do much as a housekeeper. Beth had a very healthy and human curiosity. As she filled the tin teapot with hot water and took the can of tea from the mantelpiece, she became determined to learn something more from the taciturn Kate. Her blue eyes sharpened, but she was careful to use guile, for Kate was very cunning and any information was taken from her unawares and only when she was in a good temper. Beth made very strong, rich tea, not sparing the leaves this time. She poured it into two big thick cups. She reached to the mantelpiece and brought down a box of plain cookies. “There, we’ll have a feast,” she said.
     
    Kate held the hot cup greedily in her worn hands and accepted three cookies. She placed them beside the bag of peppermints on her knee. She regarded Beth with kindness and gratitude. “You’re a good soul, Beth,” she said. “And being a good soul is very good, though stupid.”
     
    The wind shrieked against the house; the small fire trembled and fell low. The flame in the lamp bent, almost expired. The women drew closer to the hearth.
     
    “Carrie will take cold out there,” said Beth. “I think I’ll call her in soon. It’s silly for her to sit there, watching. All the ships dock down near Marblehead or in the port of Boston, not here.”
     
    “But she can see them come in,” said Kate, smacking her lips over the tea. “Leave her be. She don’t have much amusement besides watching for her daddy’s ship.”
     
    Beth sipped her tea delicately, watching the old woman under her red eyelashes. She said casually, “You took care of Carrie until I came four years ago. That’s six years you had of her, isn’t it? You said you stayed because of her mother.”
     
    “True,” said Kate, sucking loudly at her cup. “I promised her mother. Ann Esmond, that was.”
     
    “When the poor young thing was dying, after the baby’s birth?” suggested Beth.
     
    Kate grinned. “Wrong again, you and your romance! You’re thinking of Dombey and Son . Nothing like that. Caroline was three years old, and healthy as a colt. My Ann caught cold.” She stopped grinning, and a dark and vengeful look crept over her face, and she stared at the fire. “I brought Ann up; I was her nanny, fresh from England; she was my own child, in my heart. Ann and her twin sister Cynthia. Pretty as pictures. Both of ‘em. Never married, never had a child of my own. They was my children. There’s a portrait of them in Cynthia’s house now. You should see it sometime. Well. Ann caught lung fever in that damned cold house in Lyndon, and he was too near to call a doctor in time, and so she died. I said to myself, said I: ‘If that girl dies, I’ll leave this house tomorrow, and be damned to him and his brat!’ Then Ann asked me, right on her deathbed. Loved that kid, she did. Never had any real feeling for her, myself.”
     
    “Ah,” murmured Beth pitifully.
     
    “ ‘Tisn’t that I despise her, as her dad does,” said Kate. “But she’s so ugly, and not like my Ann at all. Not even like him . Wonder, sometimes, who she does look like; somebody barmy, no doubt. Maybe that’s why he avoids her. Maybe she reminds him of somebody.”
     
    “Perhaps,” insinuated Beth eagerly, “he doesn’t like Caroline because she’s a disappointment. He wanted a son?”
     
    Kate grinned all over her wrinkled face. “Wrong again. You better stop reading Dickens. They wanted a daughter, especially him . ‘Give me a daughter, Ann,’ I used to hear him say. ‘Not a son. I don’t want a son’.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    Kate pulled her afghans tighter on her withered knees. “I don’t know. So, he got a daughter, and he