Never an Empire by James Green Read Free Book Online

Father Enrique would at least pause before embarking on some new great project. But they were wrong, because Father Enrique was a man in a hurry. He had an appointment with the bishop which he intended to keep as soon as was humanly possible.

Chapter Six
    Father Enrique’s next bold move was to set about establishing a sewing school for the girls of the town’s poorest families. Once again the project prospered not only because it was his but because it made eminently good sense. The orphanage had flourished and, more importantly, was the envy of visitors from more important towns who returned home and spread the news. Why shouldn’t a sewing school also flourish and increase even further the growing reputation of San Juan Bautista?
    This time Father Enrique didn’t need a new building. There were several places standing empty which would serve his purpose. He negotiated the lease at a peppercorn rent of a former store which had closed its doors to trade some two years previously. He made the rounds of the wealthy not in search of money but of ladies who might be interested in supervising the girls. The idea fired the ladies’ imagination once more. This would not be a come and go occasion like the fund-raising fetes had been. This would bestow on the ladies who chose to sacrifice their time and energy the mantle of a supervising committee. They would have to have meetings, take minutes, organise purchases, discharge responsibilities, create timetables, and keep accounts. Moreover, they would be to all intents and purposes doing in their own sphere what their menfolk did in theirs and claimed was so difficult, tiring, and beyond the ability of mere women. Sheer heaven!
    In less than a year items from the school were being sold in the town’s market. They were plain and simple but had the advantage of being cheap, practical, and hard-wearing. The girls accepted into the school came from homes where money was always scarce and knew from personal experience what sorts of things people wanted and needed. The school’s supervising committee consisted of the eight wives of the town’s most important men who, though secretly pleased to have some suitable project on which to spend their more-than-ample leisure hours, gained even more satisfaction by being able to counter their husbands’ claims of fatigue at the end of the day by similar claims of their own. These good ladies were so pleased with the success of their school that they persuaded their husbands to hire the services of an excellent and accomplished seamstress, a young widow with a baby daughter, who, on enquiring, had been recommended to them by the nuns of the orphanage. The young woman was duly approached and gladly accepted the residential position as, one year previously, her husband had been arrested, tried, and hanged by the Americans for giving assistance to bandit known to be based in the Dimasalang mountains. The young woman had had a flourishing business among ladies in Pisag who recognised quality when they saw it and would pay that little extra to obtain it. But that clientele dried up overnight after her husband’s arrest. Under the seamstress the girls’ work progressed rapidly. Those less talented still turned out the simple garments but any girl who showed aptitude was encouraged and guided onto more sophisticated work. The ladies continued in their oversight and it was not so very long before small items from the school appeared in public among their own accessories.
    The money from all the sales was kept by Father Enrique to be used for some purpose of his own which he resolutely refused to disclose. However, when one of the girls announced she had received a proposal of marriage, the whole school rejoiced as Father Enrique announced that if she accepted the young man she would be given a dowry from the fund he had been saving to present to her husband on her wedding day. Not only that, the whole school set to