LITMIR.BIZ

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I’m Sadie, and this here is Ellen; she’s the one who saw you come in with Mrs. van Nostrum. I see Mrs. Slater took that fine blue dress Ellen said you were wearing. I hope you bid it a fond farewell, for ‘tis the last you’ll be seein’ of it. Ain’t that right, Flora?” Sadie said to the third woman.

      “The very last,” Flora agreed sourly. On closer inspection Callie saw that Flora wasn’t much past the age of eighteen or twenty, but her face was thin and haggard, and her stooped shoulders and slow movements gave her the appearance of a woman in her forties.

      While Callie did the pots and pans, they asked her questions about where she’d come from. Ellen, in particular, was interested when she learned Callie was only recently from Dublin. “I hauled over on the Meridian two years ago; that was before things got so bad in Ireland. Came over with my brother and sister, I did. They’re both gone now. Eileen came down with sickness, and Lester was hit over the head in a card game. I hail from Cork myself, but I been to Dublin once. My husband, though, he was born right here in New York.”

      Callie turned a questioning eye to Ellen. If she had a husband, what was she doing here in the Magdalene House. “My Nathaniel was taken sick last winter,” Ellen explained. “He died on the sixth of January, leaving me up to my neck in debt and a baby on the way. Things got bad for me, and before I knew it, I was out on the street. Couple or three months ago somebody told me I could come here to have my baby. Nathaniel, I calls him because his father was a good man, just unlucky. I work for the babe’s support as well as my own, but I don’t get to see much of it so’s I could save and get myself out of here. Last week I was feelin’ poorly and couldn’t work; now they say I can’t see the babe till I’ve paid what’s owed.”

      “Who won’t let you see your baby? Where is he?” The questions bubbled out of Callie. She couldn’t imagine a mother being separated from her child. “Who feeds him?”

      “Herself, Mrs. Slater and Mr. Hatterchain. They run this place and take good money to do it. Themselves, so high and mighty, takin’ a woman’s wages when they’ve already gotten what was due us from those do-gooders up on Fifth Avenue. Lots of us here have kids; they keep them in a house near here, under lock and key. If they didn’t, you’d better believe most of us would take our chances out on the street, but we gotta do what they say or we don’t never see our kids again. As for feedin’ them, the poor little tykes live for the most part on sugar tits and they get some wet nurses in otherwise.”

      Callie remembered the tiny pieces of sugar wrapped in clean linen that Peg had comforted the babies with during better times.

      “Did Mrs. Slater say where you’d be working?” Sadie asked. “She didn’t say nothin’ to me about your working in the kitchen full-time.”

      “No, she only said I’d help out here for the day.”

      “Most likely send you over to Cullen’s, that a button factory. Sortin’ and countin’ more than likely. It wouldn’t be such a bad place to work if a girl could keep her wages, but Mr. Hatterchain has a deal with Cullen and your wages will come right here and you’ll never see it in your hand, I can vouch. Here, Flora, put those pans over here for the bread to rise. Better get busy gettin’ those turnips mashed if they’re to be ready in time for supper.”

      The scents of cooking and good food filled the kitchen, but when Sadie pulled the roast out of the oven, Callie wondered how such a small piece of meat could feed everyone.

      “Why, child, this here meat ain’t for the likes of us, you can believe. No, it’s for Mrs. Slater and Mr. Hatterchain’s supper. The girls are having bread and lard and mashed turnip. But since you’re such a good girl, I’ll dip a piece of bread into the juices, and if you gobble it up quick before Mrs. Slater comes in here, I’ll be grateful.”

      That night Callie lay in her bed, the rough cover tucked under her chin. It was cold in the dormitory. Sounds of sleeping women surrounded her, punctuated from time to time by what sounded like a sob. The Magdalene Female Society was hardly more than a work house and a place for collective misery. That night at supper, when the women from the sewing room and those who worked outside came into the dining hall, she saw that they all had the same bleak, desolate expressions on their faces. Mrs. Slater told her she’d go to work the next morning with Irene who also worked in the Cullen Button Factory.

      Callie turned over, bringing the thin blanket with her. She had never posted the letters she’d written to Peggy, and she didn’t know when she’d find the time to write again. A tear slipped down her cheek; she missed home so much. So very much. But mostly she missed her mother’s voice and her loving touch. Letters would have to wait until there was something happy to write home about.

      Callie’s eyes closed in sleep. She was one day older and a lifetime smarter.

      Byrch Kenyon gave his pearl-gray cravat a vicious yank, nearly succeeding in strangling himself. He disliked these obligatory dinner parties almost as much as he disliked his host and hostess for the evening. He could write a story on the dinner his cousin Kevin Darcy and his wife Bridget were giving, could script their moves, cue their dialogue, and predict the meal right down to the pattern of the china and the value of the silverware.

      While Byrch disliked his cousin Kevin, he came closer to loathing Bridget Darcy, and their children were self-important little brats. Tonight, no doubt, they would be called down from the nursery to recite a newly learned rhyme or to sing along while Bridget manhandled the pianoforte.

      Byrch fastened his pocket watch and fob to his cobalt-blue waistcoat, the satiny fabric delineating the steely, rock-ribbed planes of his torso. The main reason he abhorred attending social functions held by the Darcys was their pretentious attitude and their obvious shame in being Irish. Bridget was forever telling anyone within earshot that their surname was of English origin.

      Byrch shrugged into his frockcoat, smoothing the velvet lapels over his broad shoulders. A last touch to the cravat, a tug on the indigo-blue coat, and a hitch at the waist of the slim, matching trousers, and he felt ready to sally forth. He checked to be certain he had enough tobacco; how Bridget did fuss about the manly aroma of pipe tobacco in her dining room. He added some loose change to his trouser pocket and secreted his billfold in the inside pocket of his coat. He wondered who the Darcys had selected as his dinner partner this evening. Kevin and Bridget were of the opinion that if Byrch were married to a presentable female with the social conscience befitting her class, he would cease being a renegade in his editorial opinions concerning the working masses.

      Byrch hoped the evening would pass quickly, that he could refrain from introducing the subject of politics, and that his cousin Kevin would keep his psuedo-aristocratic nose out of the Clarion’s viewpoint. He knew it was too much to hope for, but hope always did spring eternal for an Irishman.

      The dinner was exactly as Byrch had predicted. The courses were too numerous, the sauces too heavy, the chicken overdone to the point of being burnt. “Crisp,” Bridget called it, mimicking her new French cook. The potatoes were boiled and parsleyed and would have met his satisfaction if not for the thick white wine sauce slathered over them.

      The china was the Cabbage Rose pattern so popular these days, and the silver so ostentatious Byrch longed for a plain every-day utensil that a man could hold and still manage to feed himself. The dessert, fresh fruit in a clear, light white wine, was the only redeeming feature.

      His dinner partner was also exactly what he’d expected—a patrician from one of the best families on Park Avenue, Miss Flanna Beauchamp, in attendance with her stout, simpering mother with a keen eye to a “good match” and her overstuffed father, a financier whom she referred to as Papa, with the French inflection. The girl was a beauty, Byrch would give Bridget that, with an elegant long neck and smooth white shoulders. But he had no idea whether there was anything resembling a working brain beneath that wealth of raven hair, for Mrs. Beauchamp and Bridget monopolized the idle conversation.

      Bridget presided over her table like a reigning queen. Kevin was clearly enraptured by his confection of a wife and hung on her every meaningless word. Byrch was not averse to light conversation and was known to engage in it himself, but Bridget’s

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