The Hired Girl(7)

It turns out Miss Chandler knew about my accident. Dr. Fosse told his wife about it, and their hired girl, Betty, is sister to Emily, the girl who works at Miss Chandler’s boardinghouse. “Then it’s true, Joan?” Miss Chandler stopped to rest under the shade of a maple tree. “You were kicked in the face by a cow?”

“Kneed is more like,” I said, and I acted it out for her. She looked so worried that I made fun of myself as I told the tale. I clowned for her, heaving away at the leg of an imaginary cow. Miss Chandler was still flushed from climbing the hill, but she smiled, and something smoothed out in her face.

But even as I was telling my story, making it funny to set her mind at ease, I was worrying. If a lady pays a call on you, you ask her in, of course, but I didn’t want Miss Chandler to see inside our house. Everything’s so coarse-looking and old-fashioned and falling apart. And I didn’t know what to give her to drink. It’s too hot for a cup of coffee. The prettiest thing to give her would be a glass of lemonade, but we never buy lemons. There’s a tin of tea in the pantry, but it’s awfully old. Ma was the one that drank tea; Father likes only coffee and beer.

Then an idea came to me, and I was so excited I interrupted dear Miss Chandler, who was saying how providential it was that my eyesight hadn’t been damaged. “We can have a picnic!” I said. “Wait here, and I’ll fetch you a chair to sit on. It’s cooler in the shade than in the house.”

“I mustn’t stay,” Miss Chandler said, and I saw her eyes pass over the fields. I wondered if she was looking for Father.

“Please,” I begged, “just for a little while! I have a surprise for you. And I still have your handkerchief, with the violets on it. Please stay.”

I could see in her face that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to stay. But she laughed a little and handed me the flowers. “I brought you these,” she said. “Mrs. Lansing at the boardinghouse said I might pick them. She sends her best wishes and hopes you’ll soon be feeling better.”

I said, “How very kind” in my best manner, but I wanted to laugh. I could see that Miss Chandler had imagined me like an invalid in a book, lying in bed and having flowers brought to me. Instead I was up and doing the wash. Why, I cleaned the chicken house the day after the accident — I figured if I was going to be miserable, I might as well get the chicken house cleaned at the same time. I hate that job.

I took the snowballs into the house and set them in the sink. I smoothed out the pieces of wet newspaper, to read later on, and dashed out with one of the kitchen chairs. I set it in the shade for Miss Chandler, and I went back in to prepare our picnic. Thank heavens I had the strawberries! Ripe strawberries and real cream are good enough for anybody. If the Queen of England came to Steeple Farm, I shouldn’t be ashamed to give her our strawberries and cream.

I charged upstairs to Ma’s hope chest. There were linen napkins inside — hemstitched — and little china bowls with roses on them, too fragile for everyday. I found silver spoons and rubbed the tarnish off them as quick as ever I could. The kitchen tray’s all scratched and stained looking, but I covered it with a napkin, and I sugared the berries well — brown sugar is tastier, but white is daintier, so I used white. Then I poured on the cream. For a moment it puzzled me what the tray would sit on, because the kitchen table’s too heavy to drag outdoors. But I picked up a stool, and set the tray on that, and carried the whole kit and caboodle out to the elm tree.

“Here’s the surprise,” I said, and set down the stool and the tray. “I picked the strawberries just this morning, and the cream came from the cow that kicked me in the face.”

Miss Chandler laughed. She has such a sweet laugh, not loud like mine, and she looked quite happily at the strawberries and cream. They did look lovely.

“I’m afraid I interrupted your work,” she said, “and you have no chair.”

“I don’t need one,” I said, and sat down at her feet. I almost forgot and sat cross-legged, which I do when I’m on my bed, but in the nick of time I sank down gracefully and tucked my feet under my skirt. At that moment — with my own bowl of strawberries and cream, knowing that Miss Chandler had come to see me because I was hurt, and knowing but trying not to think about the books she might have brought me — I was perfectly happy.

But I didn’t stay happy. Not perfectly happy, anyway. The first trouble was that I couldn’t think of what to say to Miss Chandler. Usually I saw her in school, where she was always teaching me something, and I could think of tons of things to say — my opinions about poetry and famous writers and so forth. But she’d never come to call before, and I felt shy. I think she did, too, because there were pauses between everything we said. Then she began to tell me about a new pupil she’d met at an ice-cream social: “One who reminds me of yourself, dear Joan.” This new girl is named Ivy Gillespie, and Miss Chandler says she is like me: “A regular bookworm and, I think, quite clever.” My joy was poisoned by jealousy as I imagined Ivy Gillespie going to school when I can’t, and Miss Chandler liking her better than me.