Ceremony of the Innocent by Taylor Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page B

part of her experience, of a life she had never known, of something she had never seen. It fell upon her with devastation, and she jumped to her feet and ran into her bedroom and threw herself upon her hard little bed, and whimpered.
    She was awakened by a sound and sat up on her bed in darkness, for she had slept. “Aunt May?” she called.
    “Yes, and where are you, Ellen? It’s half past ten.”
    Ellen ran into the kitchen. May Watson was lighting the kerosene lamp on the table. “I’ve had an awful dream,” said Ellen.
    “Haven’t you anything else to do but dream?” asked May with vexation. “Oh, dear heaven. I’m awful tired.” The lamp jumped pale jaundiced streaks about the desolate kitchen. “Here. I brought you a slice of pie, a piece of bread and a smidgen of ham, and a hand of strawberries.” She emptied her apron pocket, and Ellen exclaimed with glee and May smiled reluctantly. “What an appetite you always have,” she said, and she reached out her scored hand and fondly touched that mass of turbulent red hair. Ellen might be ugly but she was only a child after all, and loved eating like the greedy little pig she was. Ellen began to stuff the food into her mouth and May watched with faintly smiling compassion.
    “I’ve got good news,” she said. “You are going to work for Mrs. Porter as her housemaid all summer. Seventy-five cents a week, and a supper. Beginning tomorrow. Isn’t that wonderful?”
    “Oh, Auntie May! Mrs. Schwartz just told me this afternoon that I was going to have lots and lots of money! She was right!”
    “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from that awful witch? She can bring you bad luck, but you never pay attention to what I say, Ellen.”
    Ellen tossed back her hair and smiled wildly, the strawberries staining her white teeth.
    “But it’s good luck! And she gave me a book, a marvelous book, to have as my own.”
    May Watson took her gloves and her hat and stood, sagging, in the center of the kitchen. “Oh, Ellen, Ellen,” she murmured. Then she straightened. “And I got fifty cents extra today and you can get those shoes from the secondhand. Be sure they are big and wide enough to fit you for a year or more. Ellen, Ellen.”
    Ellen stopped eating and stared deeply at her aunt, then ran to her and embraced her, almost crying, bending down to enfold her smaller relative.
    “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “Please don’t worry. Everything is good, so good for us.”
    “Nothing is ever good for our kind,” said May Watson, and suddenly she was passionately exasperated at the girl, for she was exhausted, her feet swollen and throbbing, her shoulders aching, and her hands smarting from strong soap. She pushed Ellen from her and Ellen stepped back and regarded her aunt anxiously, and with the now familiar sinking of guilt in her heart. “You got to learn that, Ellen, before you’re much older. Don’t ever expect anything from this world, ever.” May’s squirrel-gray eyes darted little lights of anger, and yet she wanted to cry.
    Ellen’s voice trembled somewhat when she said, “I was sitting a minute in the parlor.” Her eyes became enlarged, intense. “And I saw something—I don’t know what, but it was awful rich, but it made me sad, too.”
    “What on earth?” said May, pushing back her thin and grizzled hair. She put the kettle on for hot water for a cup of tea, and reminded herself that she must get more of the tea; it was the only thing which revived her after a long day’s work. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me?” For Ellen was hesitating, her ruddy head bent, her teeth biting her lower lip.
    “It was just a dream,” she said in apology, “and I don’t know why it made me—gloomy, and frightened me. I never saw that before, and yet I was me, though I seemed to be older, a grown-up lady about twenty, I think. But I looked like me; I know it. And I was looking out a window, it had little leads in it like the Mayor’s stained-glass