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“I don’t suppose we’ll be discussing that one at book club, will we, Jeeves?” She sighed at his responding whine, picturingAvis’s relentlessly cheerful smile. If the young woman had ever known a disappointment, in love or any other area of her life, she certainly didn’t show it.
“If the dog ever answers, you be sure and tell me.”
The blunt voice from the doorway was easy to identify—no one else took closed doors as an invitation to enter without knocking. Delphie, sharp elbows folded across a sunken bosom, wore her usual half grimace, as well as the latest in her line of colorful aprons, a more important fashion accessory in her estimation than the finest milliner’s creation.
“He has not thus far. Nor chewed up the boot scraper in the entryway again.” Dogs couldn’t really be held accountable for such things, though Delphie certainly tried.
She grunted in response, and Jeeves, as if understanding the scrutiny, lowered himself to his bed and sniffed innocently.
Louise took the drape off her latest work. It was larger than most of her previous projects. The browns and greens of the garden had started to take shape, the horizon line feathered out with grass and the slope of gentle distant hills.
The artist community was abuzz with worry over wartime shortages—vermilion paint, for instance, made with mercury used in shell and mine detonators, was in short supply—so Louise had opted for a pastoral scene without those brighter hues. Soon, she’d begin the detailed work: the scarecrow and carrot tops and mischievous rabbits with noses twitching to steal them.
Delphie took a wide berth around Jeeves to approach the painting, leaning in to get a good look through eyes that had lost the sharpness of youth. “Nice to see you painting again.”
“It’s for the nursery school, to put up on the wall.” Louise frowned. “Do children still read about Peter Rabbit these days?”
Modern writers couldn’t be trusted without thorough vetting. At least Beatrix Potter’s tales had solid morals at the endabout the dangers of greed and gluttony and disobeying wise adults—adult rabbits, that is.
“I say it’s charming no matter what they’ve read.” Delphie pointed to the vague pencil outline of a human form in the upper-left corner holding a ghosted-in pitchfork. “Be sure to give the angry farmer an eye patch. Freddy will love that.”
The two of them had formed a truce of sorts since the statue’s discovery, forged mainly through Frederick’s constant second helpings and excessive compliments of Delphie’s cooking. Louise couldn’t endorse flattery, of course, but it was good to have peace in the house.
“Still, I didn’t know a patch of lettuce deserved such a scowl,” Delphie added.
“I wasn’t—” Louise stopped, catching a glimpse of her face in the gilt mirror that had replaced the awful wall hanging her father had loved. Perhaps her poor mood did show slightly. “I have a headache. That’s all.”
“Humph.” Delphie blew out between her teeth, and Louise could imagine the assumptions and conclusions being made behind her cook’s squinted eyes. “‘That’s all,’ she says. I haven’t lived to eighty years without being able to spot a fib six feet from my nose.”
“You’re only seventy-seven.”
“Didn’t that fancy school of yours teach rounding?” Without waiting for an invitation, Delphie plunked herself down in Father’s armchair—new upholstery, of course, to match the rest of the redecorating. Supper preparation, it seemed, would wait. “Go on. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Given the sheer uselessness of refusing Delphie when she got into one of these moods, Louise related the details of the disappointing meeting with the contractor, receiving sympathetic grunts along the way. “What if all of this is a waste?”
“Now, now. That’s no way to talk. ‘Hope is the thing withfeathers,’” Delphie said sternly, wagging her finger at the volume of poetry beside the tumbler.
“‘That perches in the soul,’” Louise said, unable to keep from smiling as the familiar words crossed her lips.
“‘And sings the tune without the words.’”
“‘And never stops—at all—’” The words seemed to seep into her, chasing away her worries, all of them borrowing trouble from a tomorrow they hadn’t yet reached. “You’re right. No sense in giving up yet.”
Delphie gave a matter-of-fact nod and stood, her work done.
Suddenly, the idea of painting didn’t seem quite so daunting. Louise squeezed a dime of burnt sienna paint, Winsor & Newton, used by the likes of Norman Rockwell, onto her palette. “Thank you, Delphie.”
“Puh. Don’t thank me. Thank Emily.”
But it was Delphie, all those years ago, who’d thrust the book of poems at Louise to read to her father, making those long, tedious days in the sickroom more bearable.
Which, in turn, inspired an idea. “What do I have to say to convince you to come to book club with me this week?”
Delphie scoffed low in her throat. “No one wants a relic like me there.”
“I do.” It would be nice to have someone thoroughly unsentimental in attendance. A voice of reason.
A friend.
