We Five Read Free Page B

more consequential purpose: the bestowal of a formal proposal of marriage. This recollection was succeeded by a recurrence of the rapturous thought that Osborne was returning the next after noon—this very after noon—to hear her answer!
    Clara Barton had deferred that answer to give herself the opportunity to talk the matter over with Maggie, but she had lost courage the evening before, and this morning woke feeling defiantly independent of her daughter’s self-imposed jurisdiction. That assertion of maternal liberty was validated when, without even raising the matter with her, Maggie had expressed an opinion that was severally predictable, very much to the point, and altogether maddening.
    But such thoughts were not without momentary repining: “I should have discussed the proposal of marriage with her at some length, for, yes, as my daughter, Maggie is entitled to some opinion in the matter. But what would it serve? Maggie is a stubborn, wilful girl, but she isn’t the mistress of this house! If only she could find a husband of her own and set herself up elsewhere—someplace where she may decide things which have naught to do with me. Would that Mrs. Lumley’s son Henry did ask her to be his wife, and then gave up the nautical profession and took up the vocation of his greengrocer father. Then she would be happy and I would be happy and there would be cabbages and radishes for everyone concerned.”
    Mrs. Barton’s thoughts now turned to the girls who formed “We Five.” “Each of those five garden flowers are at the height of bloom and blow, and yet attachments go wanting. Is there not a single man who durst intrude upon that circle of sisterly affinity? Perhaps a good many men would have them if they would only place themselves in situations of inviting eligibility. But how is such a thing possible when all they do is sit in that back room and sew and knit and squint in the darkness and cackle amongst themselves like old hens?”
    Clara Barton glanced at the eye-wash cup set upon the table next to her bed. A feeling of warm affection overspread her. Then she smiled. She bethought her of the man she esteemed—a man who had taken such good care of her through her recent illness, though he was clearly not permitted by law to do so—a man who would take even better care of her in other places than simply beside the bed, and her smile broadened with this thought, and then a frisson of something very much like love shot through her body. She fell back against the mattress in the manner of a giddy schoolgirl, hugging her pillow to her chest as if it were a newly received valentine she should place close to her heart. In the next moment, a new thought suddenly intervened; she wondered if Maggie had put away whatever it was she had purchased from Mrs. Lumley (Clara had asked for broccoli sprouts), or had it all been left downstairs to wither without attendance?
    Food was on her mind, for her appetite had returned. And it was all due to Dr. Osborne—attributable both to his physician’s skills, which he had acquired through years of opportunistic study and informal apprenticeship, and to the healing wonders that naturally derive from a man’s loving heart.
    A heart the likes of which her daughter Maggie had yet to behold.

Chapter Two
San Francisco, California, U.S.A., April 1906
(from We Happy Five, by Grady Larson)
    Molly swiveled full circle in her father’s dental chair. Then she turned herself around in the opposite direction, giggling like a little girl. Attending the delight in his daughter’s voice, Michael Osborne entered the dental parlor from the living quarters in the back of the flat, which the two shared. He was whipping up lather in his shaving cup with his brush. “If you aren’t careful, you’re going to auger that chair right down into Mrs. Dillingham’s front parlor. And I’ll leave you to contend with her wrath all