Mary Minds Her Business

Mary Minds Her Business

George Weston

5.0
Comment(s)
164
View
37
Chapters

Mary Minds Her Business by George Weston

Chapter 1 No.1

"Patty," said Miss Cordelia one morning, "have you noticed Josiah lately?"

"Yes," nodded Miss Patricia, her eyes a little brighter than they should have been.

"Do you know," continued the other, her voice dropping to a whisper, "I'm afraid-if he keeps on-the way he is-"

"Oh, no, Cordelia! You know as well as I do-there has never been anything like that in our family."

Nevertheless the two sisters looked at each other with awe-stricken eyes, and then their arms went around each other and they eased their hearts in the immemorial manner.

"You know, he worries because we are the last of the Spencers," said Cordelia, "and the family dies with us. Even if you or I had children, I don't think he would take it so hard-"

A wistful look passed over their faces, such as you might expect to see on those who had repented too late and stood looking through St. Peter's gate at scenes in which they knew they could never take a part.

"But I am forty-eight," sighed Cordelia.

"And I-I am fifty-"

The two sisters had been writing when this conversation started. They were busy on a new generation of the Spencer-Spicer genealogy, and if you have ever engaged on a task like that, you will know the correspondence it requires. But now for a time their pens were forgotten and they sat looking at each other over the gatelegged table which served as desk. They were still both remarkably good-looking, though marked with that delicacy of material and workmanship-reminiscent of old china-which seems to indicate the perfect type of spinster-hood. Here and there in their hair gleamed touches of silver, and their cheeks might have reminded you of tinted apples which had lightly been kissed with the frost.

And so they sat looking at each other, intently, almost breathlessly, each suddenly moved by the same question and each wishing that the other would speak.

For the second time it was Cordelia who broke the silence.

"Patty-!"

"Yes, dear?" breathed Patty, and left her lips slightly parted.

"I wonder if Josiah-is too old-to marry again! Of course," she hurriedly added, "he is fifty-two-but it seems to me that one of the Spicers-I think it was Captain Abner Spicer-had children until he was sixty-although by a younger wife, of course."

They looked it up and in so doing they came across an Ezra Babcock, father-in-law of the Third Josiah Spencer, who had had a son proudly born to him in his sixty-fourth year.

They gazed at each other then, those two maiden sisters, like two conspirators in their precious innocence.

"If we could find Josiah a young wife-" said the elder at last.

"Oh, Cordelia!" breathed Patty, "if, indeed, we only could!"

Which was really how it started.

As I think you will realize, it would be a story in itself to describe the progress of that gentle intrigue-the consultations, the gradual eliminations, the search, the abandonment of the search-(which came immediately after learning of two elderly gentlemen with young wives-but no children!)-the almost immediate resumption of the quest because of Josiah's failing health-and finally then the reward of patience, the pious nudge one Sunday morning in church, the whispered "Look, Cordelia, that strange girl with the Pearsons-no, the one with the red cheeks-yes, that one!"-the exchange of significant glances, the introduction, the invitation and last, but least, the verification of the fruitfulness of the vine.

The girl's name was Martha Berger and her home was in California. She had come east to attend the wedding of her brother and was now staying with the Pearsons a few weeks before returning west. Her age was twenty-six. She had no parents, very little money, and taught French, English and Science in the high school back home.

"Have you any brothers or sisters!" asked Miss Cordelia, with a side glance toward Miss Patty.

"Only five brothers and five sisters," laughed Martha.

For a moment it might be said that Miss Cordelia purred.

"Any of them married?" she continued.

"All but me."

"My dear! ... You don't mean to say that they have made you an aunt already?"

Martha paused with that inward look which generally accompanies mental arithmetic.

"Only about seventeen times," she finally laughed again.

When their guest had gone, the two sisters fairly danced around each other.

"Oh, Patty!" exulted Miss Cordelia, "I'm sure she's a fruitful vine!"

Continue Reading

You'll also like

The Curvy Ex-Wife's Revenge: The Divorce He Gave, The Regret He Earned

The Curvy Ex-Wife's Revenge: The Divorce He Gave, The Regret He Earned

Nieves Gómez
5.0

Nicole had entered marriage with Walter, a man who never returned her feelings, bound to him through an arrangement made by their families rather than by choice. Even so, she had held onto the quiet belief that time might soften his heart and that one day he would learn to love her. However, that day never came. Instead, he treated her with constant contempt, tearing her down with cruel words and dismissing her as fat and manipulative whenever it suited him. After two years of a cold and distant marriage, Walter demanded a divorce, delivering his decision in the most degrading manner he could manage. Stripped of her dignity and exhausted by the humiliation, Nicole agreed to her friend Brenda's plan to make him see what he had lost. The idea was simple but daring. She would use another man to prove that the woman Walter had mocked and insulted could still be desired by someone else. All they had to do was hire a gigolo. Patrick had endured one romantic disappointment after another. Every woman he had been involved with had been drawn not to him, but to his wealth. As one of the heirs to a powerful and influential family, he had long accepted that this pattern was almost unavoidable. What Patrick wanted was far more difficult to find. He longed to fall in love with a woman who cared for him as a person, not for the name he carried or the fortune attached to it. One night, while he was at a bar, an attractive stranger approached him. Because of his appearance and composed demeanor, she mistook him for a gigolo. She made an unconventional proposal, one that immediately caught his interest and proved impossible for him to refuse.

Jilted Bride's Revenge: The Valkyrie Awakens

Jilted Bride's Revenge: The Valkyrie Awakens

Gujian Qitan
5.0

I had been a wife for exactly six hours when I woke up to the sound of my husband’s heavy breathing. In the dim moonlight of our bridal suite, I watched Hardin, the man I had adored for years, intertwined with my sister Carissa on the chaise lounge. The betrayal didn't come with an apology. Hardin stood up, unashamed, and sneered at me. "You're awake? Get out, you frumpy mute." Carissa huddled under a throw, her fake tears already welling up as she played the victim. They didn't just want me gone; they wanted me erased to protect their reputations. When I refused to move, my world collapsed. My father didn't offer a shoulder to cry on; he threatened to have me committed to a mental asylum to save his business merger. "You're a disgrace," he bellowed, while the guards stood ready to drag me away. They had spent my life treating me like a stuttering, submissive pawn, and now they were done with me. I felt a blinding pain in my skull, a fracture that should have broken me. But instead of tears, something dormant and lethal flickered to life. The terrified girl who walked down the aisle earlier that day simply ceased to exist. In her place, a clinical system—the Valkyrie Protocol—booted up. My racing heart plummeted to a steady sixty beats per minute. I didn't scream. I stood up, my spine straightening for the first time in twenty years, and looked at Hardin with the detachment of a surgeon looking at a tumor. "Correction," I said, my voice stripped of its stutter. "You're in my light." By dawn, I had drained my father's accounts, vanished into a storm, and found a bleeding Crown Prince in a hidden safehouse. They thought they had broken a mute girl. They didn't realize they had just activated their own destruction.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book