Page 18 of Ellen Found
“That wouldn’t earn me my thirty dollars a month,” she replied, touched at his concern.
The appraising look turned into something more intense. She felt the warmth of his hand on her shoulder. “You have gone above and beyond earning your thirty dollars this month,” he assured her. “I can never put a price on what you did last night.”
“I would do it again.”
“I know you would.” Over her protest—a feeble one—he picked her up and carried her into her room, setting her down on her bed. He looked around and found her hairbrush. He brushed her hair, gentle strokes that soothedher more than anything else possibly could. How did he know?
He seemed to sense her question. “When Clare became agitated about something or other, this always seemed to help.” He said it apologetically.
“It does,” she said. “No one’s ever done this, but it does.”
Her eyes closed as she felt herself relax, well aware that in her short lifetime of constantly doing for others, someone—out of kindness or gratitude for his daughter’s life, or maybe even because he missed doing this for his wife—was doing something solely for her.
In a few minutes she heard the carpenters, mechanics, and men who fed the hungry generators troop inside for breakfast. She tried to move, to do her job.
“No,” Charles said softly. He tied her neat hair back with the shoestring, swung her feet onto the bed, removed her shoes, and covered her with a blanket. “Sleep now.”
Before she opened her eyes later, she sensed the presence of someone in the room.For a moment, she hoped it was Charles Penrose.
Mrs. Quincy sat there with a dress across her lap. She stroked the fabric gently, smoothing out wrinkles, and brushing away some speck that Ellen couldn’t see. She patted the dress as if someone wore it, then looked up. “Here.”
Ellen raised herself on her good arm. Mrs. Quincy helped her sit up, then draped the dress across Ellen’s lap. “I took in the hem, so it should fit. She was taller.”
Ellen admired the pretty thing, with eyelet lace at the sleeves and a ruffle around the bottom. It was a dress from an earlier time, but not so distant that she hadn’t mooned over something like it in a Monkey Ward catalog. “Where did ...”
“I had a daughter once,” the cook said, then left the room quietly.
Ellen stared after her, then touched the dress.What if I get it dirty working in a kitchen?warred with,She wants me to have this.She cares.
Ellen stared at the ceiling as a great realization settled in.I doubt there is anyonehere who has not suffered a loss, she thought.I doubt I am the only child of dubious parentage here. Others are poor, too.Mr. Penrose’s wife is dead.One-Eyed Wilson has only one eye, for goodness’ sake.
She thought about Plato, dead after a heroic attempt to protect her, because that’s what friends did. She lay there and took a quiet census in her heart.
Corporal Reeves shot the bear. One-Eyed Wilson stitched her shoulder together. Gwen gave Plato a wool square. Mrs. Quincy hemmed her daughter’s dress for her. Charles Penrose brushed her hair.
She closed her eyes, thinking through the fear, the pain, the sorrow, and dared to imagine that maybe, just maybe, she had more friends than she knew. What to do with this startling revelation?
I must be a friend, she told herself.It begins now.
Dear Journal, remind me not to think only men are brave and stalwart. I am in debt forever to someone more brave and stalwart than whole armies.
SHE FELT WELL enough after an afternoon nap to put on Mrs. Quincy’s gift to her, and it fit. Her shoulder ached, but she could bear the pain. She touched her hair that Charles had brushed so thoroughly. It needed nothing.
Mrs. Quincy was opening cans of green beans in the kitchen. Her eyes seemed to soften as she looked at Ellen in her daughter’s dress. She pulled out a chair beside her.
Ellen sat down carefully, fearing any movement that might add more pain. Shethought of her resolve and forged ahead. “What was your daughter’s name?”
The motion of the can opener stopped.Maybe I was wrong, Ellen thought. But no. “Verity. Her... her father was a New Englander.”
“What a beautiful name.”
“Yes. Diphtheria took her.”
The cook opened another can, then another. “A year later, typhoid took Mr. Quincy, and I moved West.”
Mrs. Quincy rested her hand on Ellen’s good shoulder, a light touch. “I’m sorry for your losses,” Ellen said. She realized she had not known a kind touch before Charles Penrose and now Mrs. Quincy, unless she chose to count Plato’s gentle paw on her wrist last night as he surrendered. She chose kindness.
“It was a hard time,” Mrs. Quincy said simply. “Everyone knows hard times.”
