Sweet and Twenty by Joan Smith Read Free Book Online

what a tough piece of mutton he had had at the Cat’s Paw and warning them away from it, she turned to Mr. Hudson for some private conversation. “Mr. Alistair promises tough competition, I think.”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Tony is a good chap. A dry wit—his humor is not always appreciated.”
    She looked at him in astonishment. “Neither is yours in this case. You know he meant no joke. He has a severe case of foot-in-the-mouth and you will have to watch him closely.”
    “I personally like to see a good, honest man with no tricks about him run for public office. You can trust such a man as that.”
    “I think Mr. Fellows’s tricks were inadvertent, although he played a few nasty ones, and you are generous in your views. But then you mean to run a good, honest, straightforward campaign, and a little ingenuousness will not go amiss, I suppose.”
    “You have hit on just the right word. He is ingenuous. An honest, well-meaning, hard-working man.”
    “I think you are working harder than he is, but I hope you are not so ingenuous. It seems to me one of you ought to have your wits about you. Reising has a sly look about him.”
    “He’s as wily as a fox, but he doesn’t often beat me, Miss Watters. Oneof us has his wits about him, but thank you for the warning. The envelopes are all addressed, you say?”
    “Yes.”
    “I wonder if you would be interested in another little job for Tony and myself?”
    As he had added the magic last word, Miss Watters agreed without even knowing what the job was.
    “Tony has bought a great load of stuff today, and we would like you ladies to decide what we should do with it.”
    “What kind of stuff?”she asked.
    “All kinds—vegetables, clothing, various foodstuffs...”
    “Why did you buy them?”
    “To ingratiate the merchants.”
    “Oh, what an expensive way to do it!”
    “It is a sort of charity, and he can well afford it. I have to help Tony prepare for a public meeting at the Veterans’Hall tonight. He and Alistair are to make speeches to the farming community. I have asked the merchants not to deliver the goods till I give them the address, for we don’t want it all landing in on us at the abbey. Your aunt will know who could use the things. An orphanage or the local poorhouse, that sort of thing, but distributed as widely as possible.”
    “Then we must know exactly what you bought, and from which merchants.”
    “We bought things in every shop—the merchants will tell you what.”
    “You want us to go into every shop in town, you mean, and find out what you bought, and decide where it is to be taken?”
    “If it isn’t too great an imposition. I wouldn’t ask it if your aunt had not so kindly offered to help us in any way she could. And really, I come to feel we need a great deal of help.”
    There was a note of repressed desperation in this last speech, and as her relatives had really nothing better to do, Lillian agreed. But it was really quite an imposition.
    After the gentlemen had left, Lillian explained what task had been foisted on them. Martha could not have found a job more to her liking—to have an excuse to go into every shop and complain of its wares. To be consigning turnips to the poorhouse and potatoes to the orphans and deciding who should get six ells of cotton—only see how poorly it was bleached, good for nothing but dustrags—and all without having to spend a penny, was her idea of heaven.
    “Mr. Fellows is certainly a remarkably generous man,”she repeated several times as she went from shop to shop, identifying herself as “here on behalf of Mr. Fellows of St. Christopher’s Abbey, the Whig candidate.”She could not say as much for his wisdom in paying so much money for such shoddy goods, and added an aside to Sara, “You’ll have to keep a sharp eye on the purse strings when you are married. He has no management, no economy, but he is remarkably generous.”
    At the end of the long afternoon, Sara turned to Lillian