Around the River's Bend by Aaron McCarver Read Free Book Online Page B

between them. Each yard had a line for hanging clothes, and the cold breeze filled the various sheets, dresses, shirts, and unmentionables, making them dance together. They look like a line of ghosts , she thought.
    A group of young children were playing a game of ring around the rosie in the next yard, and she leaned against the tiny porch and watched them. A tinge of envy came to her as she realized that she had not known such happiness since her father had died. She had been thrust into adulthood, poverty, and hard labor all at the same time.
    She could not stop thinking about the funeral and how few of her father’s old “friends” had attended. The church had been less than a quarter full, and the funeral service had been a perfunctory affair, bringing no comfort at all to Sabrina. She thought of the grave, where there had barely been enough money for a small stone, nothing like the magnificent statuary that adorned the graves of Sir Roger Fairfax’s ancestors. Her aunt, Elberta, had wanted to put no stone at all there, for there was so little money, and the two had argued over this. Sabrina had won that argument, but it had been practically the last one.
    A sound overhead caught her attention, and she looked up into the cold sky. A flock of geese were winging their way toward the west, and she watched their flight until they disappeared. “I wish I could fly away like you,” she muttered. Then she shook her head in disgust. I’ve got to stop talking to myself. It’s getting to be a bad habit . It was, as a matter of fact, a long-standing habit, but it had never bothered Sabrina until recently.
    Sabrina was finding life with her aunt nearly intolerable, for Elberta was not an easy woman to live with—and that was putting it mildly. She was a miserly woman, and although Sabrina realized this was a necessity, she could not help resenting it. She had managed to come out of the wreckage of the financial morass her father had left with less than a hundred pounds, and she had given a quarter of this to her aunt. Sabrina hoarded the rest, not telling Elberta of it, and every night before she went to bed she took out the diamond necklace and the ruby ring and held them in her hands for a long time. At least here was something more than abject poverty.
    Now Sabrina turned back wearily into the house and began to gather the ingredients for a simple stew. Her aunt had gone down the street to visit a sick neighbor and had charged Sabrina with going to the greengrocer and the butcher to get a few groceries. She had given her a few coins, and Sabrina had spent them all. But now as she stood looking at the tiny morsel of meat she had been able to buy, the memory of the hams and legs of mutton and sides of bacon that used to adorn the kitchen in her old home came to her. The small bit she had brought home today would have gotten lost or thrown away as excess in that kitchen!
    The afternoon sun was sinking toward the horizon, and Sabrina knew that if she did not start the meal that her Aunt Elberta would not let her forget it. She had already received many lectures on how she was not a lady of property now and would have to learn to work along with the rest of them!
    A touch on her calf startled her, and she looked down to see Ulysses staring up at her. “Hungry, are you? Well, here’s a bit because you’re such a good boy!” Ulysses took the bit of meat from her hand. She stroked his fur, thinking of the argument she’d had with her aunt over the cat. Elberta had insisted she get rid of Ulysses, that it would be an extra expense, but Sabrina had won the argument. She stooped to pick up the cat. “You’re my best friend, aren’t you?” She felt him purr and held him tightly until he protested, then put him down and turned her attention to the meal.
    Sabrina had never learned how to cook and had made several mistakes that wasted food, burning a steak beyond the state