Purebred by Bonnie Bryant Read Free Book Online Page A

little animal was unscathed, and the thought of its history nearly took her breath away.
    “The leather’s new,” Grand Alice said. “Leather rots, you know, and the old string didn’t look sound to me, so I had a new one put on. You don’t want to put it on a metal chain, Carole, because it might scratch the wood.” She took the necklace away from Carole and gently held it in her own hand.
    “This would have been your mother’s, Carole. I had only sons, you know, so I decided I would save this for a granddaughter. I would have given it to your mother, but I waited too long. After she died, I decided to save it for you.” Grand Alice slipped the necklace over Carole’s head.
    All at once Carole was overcome with joy and sadness. She flung her arms around her great-grandmother and buried her head against the older woman’s shoulder to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. She had never thought that anyone in her family, much less herself, would have such a treasure.
    “I’ll save it for special occasions,” she promised. “AndI’ll always remember the story. Oh, thank you, Grand Alice!”
    Grand Alice patted Carole’s arm. “You’re welcome. I know you’re a good person to give it to. You’re like your mother, you know. Now drink your tea. I have pictures to show you.”
    Carole obediently drank her tea. But all she could think about was the amulet. “Just think,” she said, fingering the tiny animal, “I may not be the first member of the family to be horse-crazy. Maybe she—the woman who first wore this—loved horses too.”
    Grand Alice chuckled. “Maybe so. And Carole, you take care of that necklace, but mind you do one other thing too. You be sure that you pass it on to your family someday.”
    Carole nodded solemnly, not trusting herself to speak. Someday she would give the necklace to another young girl, and tell her the story she had just been told.
    After tea and two cookies apiece—“Always need a cookie with tea,” Grand Alice declared, even though it was still close to breakfast time—Grand Alice instructed Carole to bring out several photo albums from the bottom drawer of her desk. Carole was thrilled at the number of pictures they contained. What stories they must hold! She got a pen and notebook ready so she could write everything down for her project.
    First Grand Alice opened a big black album whose stiff cover crackled with age. “These are the old ones. Therearen’t too many of them—photographs were a rare luxury in those days. We start with Jackson Foley. Here he is.”
    Carole looked at his picture. To her surprise, Jackson Foley looked like an everyday person, not like the villain she thought him to be. He was thin and slightly stooped, and he looked a little stiff in his formal clothes, but he was smiling and his eyes looked kind.
    “Course, he would have been Jackson Washington then,” said Grand Alice. “On the back of the picture it says that it was taken in Boston in 1865, during the Civil War. It’s the only picture of ol’ Jackson I have. It may be the only one he ever had taken.
    “Now here …” She turned the page and showed Carole another photograph, this one of an unsmiling young black woman in a frilly white dress. She held a baby, also dressed in white, on her lap, and a toddler leaned against her knee. Two other children stood beside her. The girl was dainty, with ribbons in her hair. The boy’s belly pushed against his suspenders. He looked ready to fight. “This is Jackson’s second wife, and their children. The boy, Frederick, was my husband’s grandfather.”
    Carole wrote his name down. “Who are the rest?”
    “The woman’s name was Cleone. Little girl with the ribbons was named Elsie. She died the next year, but James—that was my husband, James—said his grandpa had been fond of Elsie and used to talk about her.”
    “What did she die of?”
    “Oh, honey, nobody knows. In those days children could take sick one day and die the