Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) (21 page)

I stole out of bed careful as a mouse and went and peeked out between the curtains. We had us another bright day, and the sun was just up, which made it six, give or take a quarter. So there was no hurry about getting Patience up. I wanted her to sleep and sleep in her pretty way.

Naturally the fire was long ago gone out, which was nothing I wasn’t used to, but my underwear felt like snow to put on because I hadn’t thought it would be right to keep it under the covers with me the way I would’ve back home. Fact is, at the time I didn’t think of it. So there I was throwing on my clothes, with my whole body shaking and my teeth snapping together, when I looked over at my darling and she was awake and looking at me and getting ideas. I have to thank that cold underwear for the good sense and self-control I showed. I didn’t get a single idea back at her, and it’s easy to see how the day would’ve been spent if I had.

I did take her underwear over and tuck it in beside her to get warm, and she did get her arm around me and try to pull me in, but I said, “Woman, once is enough to get up on a winter’s morning.”

It did me good to have her want me, and to not be scared to refuse her. There’d been a time when I wouldn’t’ve dast do that, but after last night I could know we felt the same, and I could keep my own opinions and make my own mind up, and be the one to think of all the things we had to get done today.

She said, “You’ve become sassy overnight,” in a way that made me feel she didn’t think sassy was very bad.

I said, “If you don’t want me sassy, you mustn’t do me like you do.”

I just never felt so grown-up and worthwhile and proud and able to manage in my whole life before, all because she’d wanted me so much and I’d had enough to give her and make her melt like that and then sleep like that, and wake up with her face full of light.

I said, “You can sleep a little more. It’s early yet. I’m going to go look around a little.” I knew she wouldn’t go back to sleep. It was just a way we both understood, without having to say.

I went downstairs, whistling “I’m Bound for the Kingdom.” I couldn’t stop myself, but I kept it as low as I could.

The help was all crashing around in the kitchen fixing breakfast. It looked kind of interesting but they didn’t have any time for me, so I went and sat in the parlor and looked at a newspaper that was there. It wasn’t planned for beginning readers like Garvey was so I had a hard time with it, but it kept me busy and the main thing was it kept me quiet, so when a man lodger came in and my first thought was to ask him, “Are you waiting for
your
wife too?” the newspaper steadied me and I kept my fool mouth shut.

At breakfast the captain told Patience where to go to get passage up the Hudson. He had people in that lodging house from all over, like France and Holland and South Carolina, all of them speaking so outlandish I should’ve thought they’d play rich and deaf too, but they had plenty of opinions and plenty to say. When they heard where we were going, they just poured out advice and warnings and scarey thoughts until I wished Patience had just kept still. People never can see the good of an idea until it’s all done. They didn’t scare me, but I worried they might scare Patience. Except I was rich and deaf, I would’ve asked them what they did other mornings without us for entertainment.

They said our Connecticut banknotes wouldn’t be good out in Genesee. They said speculators had grabbed up all the best farms and ordinary folk couldn’t hope for anything but scrub. They said the British might come swooping down out of Canada any time, like they did before when they burned Buffalo. The British didn’t want us filling up the West and getting to be a great nation, they said. “Jealous,” one said. “No, terrified,” another one said, which didn’t make entirely pleasant listening either but at least it took their minds off of us.

There were women lodging there too, as their regular home. I had it from Patience that there’d been women like us before, because the Bible complained of them, so I naturally wondered right away about these two, but they claimed to be mother and daughter, and after I looked at them a little better I got to believe it, and anyway their faces didn’t shine. I almost sighed out loud. I so much wanted somebody to tell.

Patience wrote a note to Parson and signed my name to it, even though I told her he’d know better than to think I could handle a quill so perfect and elegant in this short while, or ever. She wrote that my friend Miss Patience White and I were in the city briefly and would like leave to call at the convenience of the Reverend Mr Peel and Mrs Peel. Patience hired one of the captain’s servants to carry the note to Parson’s house, and before it seemed possible the servant was back.

I thought he probably hadn’t even gone at all, but no, he had a note from Mrs Peel saying she’d been longing to know me and she couldn’t be more delighted, and she’d be pleased to fetch us as soon after noon as was reasonable, say one o’clock.

It was heartwarming to get such a note, and an all-round relief, but I got such a strange little nervous feeling like I was accountable for Mrs Peel and maybe Patience would think she didn’t amount to much, being so friendly and folksy and not like a New Englander. And maybe Patience would think Parson was an ordinary man, or light or silly or weak or foppish.

Patience read the note over again. She said, “I believe she wrote this standing up and in a hurry.” I stayed nervous. Patience said, “I wonder if everyone in New-York is so warm and open-hearted?” I started hoping. She said, “Oh, sweetheart! Maybe we’re out of stingy country at last!” So I smiled and smiled, until I commenced to wonder what Parson and his wife would think of Patience. Must be I just liked to worry.

Being crammed into the end of an island like that meant the houses had to be hooked together and couldn’t have yards and had to be too tall and have too many stairs, but it also meant New-York was a handy town to get around in, not much ground to cover. Patience went by a little map the captain drew for us, and we found the Albany Basin without trouble even though it was on the other side of town. I thought she was so brilliant, telling how to turn all those corners by a map, but then she showed me how and it was easy.

The basin had a couple of steamboats in it. Patience thought we ought to study them and see if knowing something would take some of my scare out, but it was clear to me that knowing more just meant getting scareder. I wouldn’t go look and she stayed by me. She wasn’t scared. She has a liking for the new. But bad enough we had to ride on one of those boats, without looking at it first and brooding, I figured. I just wished we couldn’t hear either, that sound like a million tuckered-out horses, like a wild teakettle the size of a house. But it could do in a day what sail took two weeks at, and cost less to boot, so what to do? I sort of knew it wouldn’t really hurt us. I was just scared of having a scared feeling.

The agent said the cheap Albany boat was making up a cargo and would leave when it was made. We should have our trunks brought over and ask back every day, he said, and meanwhile enjoy New-York. It was such a comfort to be with Patience and not feel obliged to scowl. He smiled and she smiled, so I allowed myself a little smile too, and when we walked away she said, “It must be our happy faces. There’s a saying, which I now see the truth of, that all the world loves a lover.”

It was really very bad of her to take my breath away in the middle of a street full of drays and dray horses like that. She just smiled at my problem, and try as I might I couldn’t feel very cross.

After dinner I couldn’t keep myself away from the parlor window, but Patience kept calm and read. It seemed a good long wait for Mrs Peel, but that was just me. I won’t speak against that good warm woman. She was
not
late, she did
not
keep us waiting, and finally there she was. I knew her by Potiphar. He looked so odd, a big strong horse like him pulling a little light city rig, but he was still my dear Potiphar and the sight of him pleased me so.

I rushed right out without my cloak to give him a hug. He was a kindhearted horse and he took my hug even if he didn’t remember me. How could he know me when I had on a dress and smelled of lavender and Patience? When I said, “Potiphar! Potiphar, honey horse!” he moved his ears like something stirred in his memory. At least my voice was the same.

Then I got up my nerve and looked back at the rig where Mrs Peel was. She was a sort of plumpish, sort of plain-faced woman, giving me a friendly looking-over. “It’s Sam, at last,” she said. “I’m so sorry to be late.”

I said no, no, she wasn’t late, and then Patience came down the steps and put my cloak around me and nodded at Mrs Peel with just a touch of New England frost about her. I was afraid she was blaming Mrs Peel that I ran out in the cold to hug a horse, but I later found out Patience was shy. I’d’ve never guessed it, her with nothing to be shy about.

Mrs Peel said, “Miss White – Sam – do get in,” and right while we were still climbing up she set to talking in a way some folks might’ve thought meant she wanted to be noticed, but I knew it was so we’d feel easy. Just knowing she wanted us to did the job for me. She said how Parson’d told her all about me (which I kind of doubted), and how she’d been so envious because he was the one who got to know me while she stayed home and gave pianoforte lessons to empty-headed, soft, silly,
ordinary
girls.

She said, “I told him another summer I’d go with him. I would
not
let him be the only one to have adventures. Or I’d get a van and start off for myself. Disguised as Dan Peel, of course.” And she laughed, like she knew plain enough she could never look slender and elegant, and like she didn’t fret about it. She said, “And I’d keep my eyes open for a boy to help me. I’d do it, too, except that I’m afraid my boy would turn out to be really a boy.”

It was a relief to see Patience’s face turn friendly. I was afraid she might think Mrs Peel was a touch hearty, a touch common, but Patience knew the same as me how uncommon that much kindness is.

In just a few squares – hardly worth hitching up Potiphar for except to show good will – we came to Little George Street and the Peel house and had us a fine welcome on the front steps from Parson and a whole crew of little Peel boys and girls who’d heard all about me too. And I knew that my own natural way was what was wanted, and that it would be an awful disappointment all around if I was to act like a lady. I just hoped Patience knew so too.