Part 2 (1/2)
I may in Glory stand-
A Halo, perhaps, upon my Head,
But with a Needle in my Hand.
They sure take this stuff seriously, I'm thinkin'. Cheerful bunch, too-a lot of the verses up there go as you read this I am now dust and suchlike. I would sit there with a cloud of gloom over my head, 'cept the little girl next to me is even gloomier. She seems to be about twelve years old and looks to be the youngest one here. We're about the same size, 'cept I've come out a bit on top and she ain't yet.
I see from her sampler that her name is Rebecca. Rebecca Adams.
”What's the matter?” I whisper to her. ”I wish I was dead,” peeps the squeaker, not looking up from her toil.
”What?” I asks back at her.
”'I Wish I Was Dead,'” she says, finally looking up at me. ”That's what I'm going to put at the bottom of my sampler.” She gives a few sniffs. ”And then I'd be an angel up in heaven and not here.”
”Here's so bad?” I say, plunging my needle in to start the ABCs on my own first sampler. The white cloth is stretched over a frame to keep it taut, and it's all clean and bright and it seems a shame for me to come along and mess it up.
”I'd rather be home playing with my dog.”
I can understand that. I'd rather be on the Dolphin playing with Jaimy. I take advantage of the nature of this cla.s.s to take a piece of the black string and put Jaimy's ring on it and hang it around my neck and drop the ring down inside the front of my dress. It is cold on my skin for a moment and then it ain't. I think of his letter upstairs burning a hole in my seabag, but I must wait till the proper time.
”Well, you'll be an angel by and by, but I wouldn't rush it if I were you. This world has many charms, you know.”
”But I don't know how to do this stuff.”
”Neither do I, Rebecca. But maybe we can learn to do it together. Hmmm?” I gives her a c.o.c.ked eyebrow and a wink, and I get a weak smile out of her as we both turn to our labor.
French is next and better. Tilly had given us some French lessons on the Dolphin, thinkin' that since we were fightin' them we might end up captured by them and so it would be good if we could talk to our captors. Maybe on that awful day on the beach, maybe if I could have talked to the pirate LeFievre in his own language, he wouldn't have put that noose around my neck and hauled me up. I doubt it, though.
I'm behind the others, but I'll get it. The teacher is Monsieur Bissell and he gives me a book to study, and I will learn from it and catch up.
”I really appreciate it, Miss, you showin' me around like this. Sure as h.e.l.l none of the rest of 'em is gonna help me.” We are heading down the hall to our next cla.s.s.
”I'm sorry you were treated so badly this morning,” she says. ”They were abominable. And I am sure Mistress was not much better.”
”It warn't so bad,” I says, flas.h.i.+n' her my best grin and showin' that I have a naturally cheerful nature. ”At least they didn't strip off all my clothes, beat me up, and try to hang me, all of which has been done to me before.” This raises her eyebrows and breaks her stride a bit. Oops, I thinks. Not supposed to talk about that.
”I wanted to smack that one so bad,” I growl, glaring over at Clarissa Howe.
”It is good that you did not. You might have been asked to leave the school.”
Hmmm. So that's one way out of here, I thinks. Just pop Miss Howe one on the nose. But I bet they'd toss me out and keep my money.
”Right,” says I. ”I reckon I'm going to have to learn to fight like a lady, then. What's next?”
”Manners and Decorum,” says Amy, as we follow the others down the hallway. ”Again taught by Mistress and ... whatever is the matter?”
We had come to a window and by chance I looked out over the city and down to the water and I am stunned to see the Dolphin standing out of the harbor. She has an offsh.o.r.e wind behind her and has all her lower sails set, and at the very moment I spy her, all three royals are dropped and quickly fill, just as quickly as my eyes fill with tears. There is a bank of puffy white clouds out on the horizon and soon she will be tearing along beneath them. She holds all that I hold dear and she is leaving without me.
”Nothing,” I say to Amy, and wipe my eyes on my sleeve. ”Just a little homesick.”
And so we have Manners, Decorum, and Household Management, with Mistress, herself, teaching. Not that I get to see much of it-as soon as I walk in, I'm taken aside and put in another room with a girl named Martha to teach me how to do a proper curtsy, that dippy thing that girls do instead of bowing like the boys. She don't like it much, having to be with me instead of cl.u.s.tered around Clarissa, but she does it. Guess you don't say no to Mistress. She shows me how to put the feet and how you spread out the dress when you go down and how to come up all smooth and graceful. And how there's degrees of curtsies, depending on whether the person you're doing it to is higher in station than you, or lower. And how to do it in front of boys or gents, them's you like and them's you're just bein' polite to.
Right. Just you wait, Jaimy Fletcher, just you wait till Lady Jacky tries this out on you. It'll melt the c.o.c.kles of your highborn heart for sure, as I know you like your ladies bein ladies and not crude tomboys like I was. Am.
After we practice for a while and Martha is satisfied that I can handle this drill without looking totally green, we go back to cla.s.s and Martha tells Mistress that I got it down sort of all right, and Mistress says, ”Very well. Miss Faber, please thank Miss Hawthorne for the instruction.”
I understand.
I dip down in the required way for doing it in front of someone higher than you 'cause there sure ain't n.o.body lower than me around here, and as I come up I say, ”Thank you, Miss Hawthorne, for teaching me,” and Martha dips down, but not so far as me, and says, ”You are welcome, I'm sure.”
Mistress watches the performance with the same narrowed eye Captain Locke used when watching his gun crews exercise the great guns. ”All right,” she says, apparently convinced that I will not bring total disgrace to her school in the matter of curtsies. ”Now, Miss de Lise and Miss Howe. Please take Miss Faber out and teach her how to do a simple introduction.” Take her out and shoot her is what everybody's thinkin', I know.
It's plain that Mistress don't think too much of my conduct upon arriving this morning. The three of us march out, books on heads, chins up, lips together, teeth apart, and eyelids at half-mast.
After we enter the room I had just left, being newly trained in the matter of curtsies, I stand there and wait, watchful as any hapless mouse in the close company of two fierce and very interested cats.
Clarissa smiles upon me and turns to the other girl and says, ”My dear Miss de Lise, please permit me to introduce you to Miss Faber, of the no-account English Fabers. She's a Tory, don'cha know? Absolutely devoted to that crazy King George.”
Miss de Lise does something with her mouth that I suppose is a superior smile, and she nods ever so slightly and stares over my head and says, ”Charme. Such a plaisir. I have heard so very much of ze swamp-dwelling Fay-bears.”
She is French!