The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark by Lawana Blackwell Read Free Book Online Page A

wisdom from the Word. And as her students were still very young, there was always hope that that would happen.
    One by one, she called upon others to read. The topics ranged from Christmas memories to learning to ride a horse to gathering wildflowers on the Anwyl. Ben Mayhew stood and delivered a poem about fishing that was adequately structured but not nearly as amusing as the one Lydia had read over his shoulder. She called upon Philip Hollis last. Reluctantly he walked to the front of the classroom, his auburn hair almost dull compared to his friend Ben’s cap of flame.
    And like Ben, Philip maintained he had no use for poetry. “ What good will it do a doctor to know the difference between trochees and dactyls? ” he had once asked her in frustration when he was having a particularly tough time completing an assignment. He held his paper at chest level with both hands and began:
At River Bryce a tortoise bit my toe
I danced and roared but it would not let go
And so I hobbled home, at least a mile
Attached to that cantankerous reptile
The cook saw my predicament and cried,
“I have the kettle boiling—come inside!”
That night I said to family as we dined
“If there’s a toenail in your soup, it’s mine.
     
    Youthful laughter filled the classroom as Philip lowered his paper, his face fairly glowing with surprise and pleasure. Lydia smiled too. To know that she had had a hand in helping him discover this latent talent filled her with a wondrous awe. A familiar scripture came to her mind regarding children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them .
    She asked Philip to read his poem again and thought, Happy also is the woman whose days are full of them .

Chapter 4
     
    After taking a shortcut across the green, Andrew was just unlatching the vicarage gate when he heard the trap being pulled up the lane. Just the thought of spending a little time with his wife was enough to lighten the doldrums that had afflicted him all morning. It seemed that at every call he made after leaving the Worthy sisters, people had looked at him curiously. Even the occasional passersby with whom he traded greetings in the lanes. Was he that transparent, his guilt so easily readable across his face? I’ll never do anything like that again, Father , he vowed.
    Again he set the basket down, this time over his own garden wall, and turned to wait for Julia. Only it was Mrs. Hayes, one of his parishioners, sitting at the reins of a runabout being drawn by a chestnut-colored bay. Of all mornings!
    “It looks like that Missus Hayes again.” Luke’s voice came from behind his shoulder, unmistakable for the whistled “s.”
    “I’m afraid so,” Andrew was unable to restrain himself from saying, even while he raised a listless hand to greet his visitor.
    “You should’ha stayed away a little longer, Vicar.”
    Andrew turned his head to grin at the caretaker and was dismayed to receive the same look that had haunted him from other faces for most of the morning. At my own home too? he thought. But the trap had come to a halt, and he stepped forward to assist Mrs. Hayes as Luke took charge of the horse.
    “I want you to talk with my Luther!” the woman declared before her feet had even touched the ground. She was a waspish little woman in her late forties, with hair drawn back into a severe knot under a little straw bonnet and a high-pitched, whining voice.
    “Mrs. Hayes, this is not a convenient—”
    “He said he was just going to deliver the morning milk to the factory… four hours ago! ” The veins in her forehead stood out in livid ridges. “Well, sure enough, he’s been at the smithy all morning, trading lies with that other lot of slackers!”
    “Now, Mrs. Hayes, just because they like to visit—”
    But she continued on as if he hadn’t attempted to speak. “You don’t find me wasting time at those charity women’s teas and such nonsense!”
    And they thank you for that , Andrew thought.
    “And when I