At the Sign of the Star by Katherine Sturtevant Read Free Book Online Page A

teach you to make a powder which will help keep your teeth clean and sound. Hester says you do not use one now.”
    This was true. It was my custom to wipe my teeth with my linen napkin after dining, and nothing more. It was what my father had always done, and it seemed good enough to me.
    â€œFirst we will take an ounce of white salt. See? Next, an ounce of cuttlebone. We will mix them together…”
    Obediently I took the mortar and pestle and began to grind the cuttlebone.
    That week we made tooth powder, a salve for the lips made of beeswax, a cordial of orange-water, and a remedy for children with rickets.
    â€œI am the only child here,” I said to her when she told me of this last, “and I do not have rickets.”
    My stepmother did not answer at once. She smiled and looked down at the counter, which she was cleaning with a rag. I knew she was thinking of the children she meant to bear to my father.
    â€œA good closet has many remedies within,” she said at last.
    2
    I was not made to leave the shop entirely, but it did not matter, for my pleasure there was spoilt. In the afternoons, when I yet helped behind the counter, she was there, too, welcoming those who came to buy and bossing the apprentices, while my father dined away from home and took himself to the Stationers’ Hall or the printer’s. Even Mr. Winter’s visits were not the same. Now he gave his coin to Susannah instead of to me, and asked her about great men of the City, and what plays they most liked. In the mornings, when my father kept to the shop, I was kept from it, and I saw him but seldom now, except at table. I complained bitterly to Hester, but was wise enough to hold my tongue when my father was by, for he walked everywhere with his head lifted skyward and a great smile upon his face.
    I did not understand him. She had turned our lives upside down. She had dusted and straightened the small parlor, and he did not even care. Now, if he sat there, she sat with him, on the cane chair that once was mine. But most often they sat together in the large parlor, which she filled with her pretty, silly things until I hardly knew it. I liked better to sit alone or with Hester in the small parlor, though it bore fewer and fewer traces of my father.
    Not long after my lessons in housewifery began, I found a way to entertain myself at my stepmother’s expense. We sold a book in the shop called The Queen-like Closet, by Hannah Woolley, which contained recipes of all kinds, for food and for medicines. It also included menus for fine dinners, and examples of proper letters written on diverse occasions. It was not a book that had interested me in the past, for I liked not to concern myself with women’s business. But Hester had her own bound copy, which she often consulted. Now at last I, too, found it most valuable.
    One evening, when my father was out and Hester busy with her duties, I sat with my stepmother in the large parlor and studied the book closely. “Mother,” I said eagerly, “here is a recipe for a very sovereign water which will be of great use to you.”
    â€œAre you reading again, Meg? We must begin on your needlework soon, that you may be usefully occupied.”
    â€œYou are reading yourself,” I pointed out. She had before her a bound book with dark covers, though I could not say what it was, for I could not read the title from where I sat.
    â€œI have mastered the arts you are still learning. Still, even I might be better occupied mending your father’s torn waistcoat than wasting my time this way.” And she gave a guilty glance to her book.
    â€œI think you will find my time was not wasted tonight,” I told her.
    â€œWhat is it you have found, then? I do not think I need Mrs. Woolley’s help in my kitchen or my stillroom.”
    â€œThis very sovereign water is good for many ailments, but you will find it most especially useful as it helps speedily