Chapter 15

C HAPTER 15

Nobody minds having what is too good for them.

—Jane Austen

Marigold headed for the mercantile with more determination than ever to create a positive view of her less-than-socially-acceptable relatives. But from the moment she stepped under the merchant's clanging bell, she was met with narrow-eyed suspicion and a silence so sharp it was pointed—directly at Marigold.

"Well." The floor clerk smirked behind his mustache, and Marigold's ire rose when she recognized the dratted woolly ogler from the train. "What do you know. Wondered if you'd turn up."

Wasn't it damnable how often the sight of an independent, unaccompanied young woman brought out the condescending littleness in a man? No matter. Marigold never minded a challenge.

"Good afternoon," she said brightly. "I require thirty feet of one-inch-diameter, nineteen-gauge Norwich wire fencing, rolled, if you please, into a bale."

"Aren't you mighty particular? Where you been hiding yourself?"

She adjusted her approach to such ill-bred curiosity—she softened her voice. "If you do not have Norwich wire fencing of that specification, what do you have?"

"Chicken wire, I s'pose you mean?" the clerk said, as if it were something of a privilege for him to share such information. "I can cut you thirty feet in length, but it'll cost you a pretty penny."

As Marigold had silver in her pocket and a congenital dislike of unsolicited information from men who were invariably less well-informed than she, she asked again. "What is the diameter and gauge of the wire fencing you do have?"

The answer was of such indifference to the clerk, he couldn't bring himself to exert the energy required to shrug. "Do you want it or not?"

"If it is less than two inches in diameter, I should like it very much"—and here she let the full reptilian chilliness of her crocodile smile glint at him—"baled, along with a Yale cylinder brass padlock and hasp, an eight-pound sack of carbolic powder, two large cakes of lye soap, a twenty-five pound sack of lime, and a carton of Gayetty's medicated paper for the water closet."

"And a partridge in a pear tree," the man sneered. "That's an awful lot of privy paper for such a small a—"

"Also"—she overrode his doubtlessly crude innuendo—"I require eight yards of that very pretty blue-and-green calico cotton, one pane of clear window glass cut to eight inches by ten inches, wrapped, as well as a tin of putty, to be delivered forthwith to Mrs. Bessie Dove's boardinghouse on Cove Street."

"Dove's?" he scoffed. "Where'd you say you were from?"

"I did not say," Marigold rejoined, never letting her icy smile falter. "But the place from whence I hail is renowned for minding its own business. None of which is your business, which, I should think, is more properly the selling of goods requested to paying customers."

"Which," the clerk echoed in a tone just shy of mimicry, "brings me to asking if you're a paying customer and not wanting to be extended a line of credit."

Marigold reached into her pocket and withdrew a silver dollar. "Payment in cash, my good sir." She made her tone everything condescending. "If it's not too much trouble? Or too high to count."

He was buffeted back enough to satisfy Marigold's feelings, though he took his own good time in pulling the requested items off the shelves and measuring out the fabric, glass, and wire.

"Anything else, Your Majesty?"

This time Marigold let herself laugh. "Indeed, yes. A toasting rack, if you have one. And if not, would it be possible to order one?"

"Special orders come three cents extra."

"Naturally." She laid her calling card upon the table like a poker player revealing a winning hand. "Order for Miss Marigold Manners, resident at Hatchet Farm, Great Misery Island. I expect I'll be back within the week to receive it. How much do I owe?"

The fellow closed his gaping mouth in startlement before he totted up the total on a notepad and thrust it toward her without any further discourse or innuendo.

Marigold paid the sum in exact change from the coin in her purse. "There you are—minus ten cents to correct your small error of addition. I'm very much obliged. I'll expect the goods to be delivered to Mrs. Dove's promptly. I have the tide to catch." She hoped her smile was dazzling in its icy coolness.

"Good gravy." The man swore. "Ain't you just something? Old man Hatchet's like to make a meal out of you, if he don't murder you first."

"Don't be ridiculous. Or rude." Marigold wished she had thought to arm herself against impertinence with her umbrella; as it was, her wit would have to do. "Sarcasm is no substitute for customer service, my good sir. Good day."

She sailed out under the bell like a nimble yacht cutting across the bow of a workaday Gloucester fishing schooner just for the pleasure of the feat and charted her course for the wire office, where she sent a telegram to Isabella asking for advice about Daisy, before she returned to the Doves', where she drank a glass of much-needed lemonade, collected her money from Samuel, and loaded her provisions into Lucy's skiff.

But the moment the boat cleared the dock, Marigold's righteousness and native positivity lost ground to the misgivings the townspeople's repeated warnings against the Hatchets had planted in her head.

Was tidying the place up and liming the outhouse enough to make her cousins trust her with the truth about whatever had passed between her mother and Ellery Hatchet? Were the advantages she might be able to give Daisy—and Wilbert and Seviah and maybe even Lucy as well—worth the risk of returning to a place where she was so clearly unwelcome? Where them girls might have drowned?

She was more than thankful that she had Lucy, imperturbable and singing a soft ballad as she sailed the skiff, or Marigold might have given way to the strange, dreadful frustration that clouded her normally sunny outlook. If Lucy had no qualms about returning to Great Misery, then neither would she.

And she was cheered by the sight of Wilbert standing on the dark shore of North Cove waiting in welcome—until they drew close enough to the sheltered beach to see that his countenance was as stormy as a nor'easter.

"You sure made yourself to home with our things," he accused. "Where's all the …" He gestured in frustration back toward the woods and, presumably, at the now-empty farmyard. "All them things we was storing out in the dooryard?"

"Leaving metal to rust and ruin is not storage, Cousin Wilbert. And what could not be repaired, like the mangle—and how do you like having your clothes laundered regularly? It looks well on you—matches your eyes. But as I was saying, what could not be repaired at beneficial cost, I sold for scrap metal. Here is your profit." She handed the dumbfounded man his money. "And you'll see I made sure to be paid in silver coin, not paper money."

He looked at her with a charming combination of awe and suspicion, with the greater portion given over to awe. "This is more'n I can take in a two-month."

"Then I am glad I went to the trouble." She patted his arm in genuine pleasure before she returned to practical matters. "Thank you for your company and assistance, Lucy. Do you need any help with your things?"

"No, thank you." Lucy hefted her covered basket and left Marigold with a now-silent Wilbert.

"I expect you could make a favorable report to your father that you asked me to undertake the errand, Cousin." Marigold tried another approach. "I'm sure he'll be pleased at the profit."

"Yeah, I reckon I might could." He stared at the coins, weighing them in his hand before stowing the money carefully in his pocket and taking up the parcels from the mercantile. "Do you think maybe we could keep just how much you got for the junk atwixt us, you and me? Least till I can figure what to do with it?"

"Certainly," she swore, for she knew the value of loyalty to a skittish ally. "I give you my word. But may I ask why?"

Wilbert made sure to check the seemingly empty path before he gave her his quiet answer. "Pa's got some strange ideas. Him and Granny both."

"About the island? Or about money?" A miserly, holding-back disposition would go a long way to explaining the decaying state of the place.

"About everything," he admitted. "Pa's no farmer, though he's tried to farm this salt patch for nigh onto fifty years. But it still looks like a bag o' nails, don't it?"

"Less so now." Which made her all the more glad she had made the effort and even gladder that she had trusted Wilbert with the resultant funds. "He objects to your efforts to change or improve the farm, like with the pigs?"

"That's it." He nodded, grateful for her understanding. "Pa'll pitch a goldang fit if'n I get more pigs—swine he calls them. Says that's what they're called in the Bible and they're pagan and unclean."

"Leviticus, chapter eleven, as I recall."

"Is that the Bible?" He scratched at his stubbled chin. "Pa's always preaching verses at us, but they don't make much sense to me." He looked at her with something that might be respect. "You sure do know a lot of book things."

"I am happy to put that book knowledge to use for you."

"Your book knowledge tell you what to do with this pile of rock and salt grass?"

"Actually, I once read some stories set in Scotland." She remembered one glorious semester devoted entirely to the British Romantics. "And it seems to me their western islands, which are climactically temperate like Great Misery, are foraged very successfully by sheep."

"Sheep?" He chewed the word around in his mouth as if he were testing the taste of it. "The old man'll be sure to look blue at 'em on account they have cloven hooves too."

"Whatever the anatomy of their hooves, I should think you'd need more information on cost-benefit ratios and recommended number of animals per acre before you could make an educated decision."

He let out a low whistle of admiration. "But I ain't educated, nor likely to get so."

"Well, perhaps not in a regular school, but what about the Grangers?" She mentioned an agricultural group she had heard of as being particularly progressive—especially in their views of women and suffrage. If Daisy and Lucy could become New Women, why couldn't Wilbert be brought to an understanding of higher principles as well?

"There's a Grange Hall in Pride's Crossing—Pa rents the hall for his preaching now and again, when he can sneak off island without Granny being none the wiser—but I don't belong. And Granny won't spare any money for dues."

"Now you have some money of your own," she reminded him. "Perhaps that might be your first use of the funds—to join to acquire knowledge in advance of acquiring stock?"

Wilbert still wasn't convinced. "Don't know how folks round here would take to sheep."

While her natural instinct was to let the logical facts dictate the course of action, "folks' " opinions be damned, Marigold certainly wouldn't want to encourage anything that would make Wilbert's position in the community any more tenuous. "Why don't I do some research at the library in town and see what information I can find about sheep farming along the Atlantic coast before you make any decision?"

"You'd do that for me?" The first real smile Marigold had seen on her cousin's face lit him like a bonfire at a clambake. "Thank you, Cousin Marigold."

She patted his arm in companionable agreement. "I'm glad I could help."

"Why don't you take supper with us this evening? It's likely to just be fish chowder and bacon—Cleon can't seem to catch nothing but alewives—but …" Words failed him for a moment, before he swiped the hat from his head and said, "I'd like it if you'd take supper with us."

Marigold was torn between the thought of another helping of the ham Bessie Dove had sent out with Lucy and the prospect of what would surely be a miserable meal from Cleon. And there was Bessie's warning— not to eat a thing out of that kitchen —to be considered as well.

But some things were more important than food—like family and loyalty and someone else's happiness. "I'd be honored to do so."