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Jacob King cast a quizzical look at his daughter as they drove out of town and into the countryside.
“What’s the matter with you, Mima? Aren’t you feeling well?”
Jemima rolled startled eyes to her father’s worried ones. “I feel fine,” she stammered.
He gave her a shrewd look, and chucked her under the chin with one big knuckle. “You look almost feverish. Your cheeks are flushed, your cap is off center, your hair is mussed and you look as if you’d seen a ghost. If I didn’t know for sure that those boys of yours were at work right now, I’d say you were suffering from a bad case of puppy.”
She gasped, and turned her eyes down to her lap.
But her father only laughed. “I suppose your Mamm is right. I am too hard on you – my poor girl! I guess I do see a puppy under every bush. But it’s only because, so far, there has been one under there. Every time!”
He looked at her, laughed again, and turned his eyes back to the road. “It’s what I get for having such a beautiful daughter.”
Jemima looked up at him, but he was gazing out over the road. “Don’t let your mother know I told you that,” he said, without turning his head. “She’ll say I’m teaching you to be vain.”
Jemima smiled just a tiny bit, and reached for his hand. “Thank you, Daed,” she said gratefully.
By the time they got home, it was midmorning, and the day promised to be fair and hot. Her father unhitched Rufus and took him back to the barn, and Jemima went inside the house.
Her mother was heavily embroiled in a major baking project. She was bending over the kitchen table with her hair flying from under her cap and flour up to her elbows. She was rolling out dough with a wooden pin. She looked up and cried out in relief.
“Oh, Jemima, there you are! How I missed you this morning! You would have been willing to help me, but your sister ran away, and I haven’t seen her since breakfast. Just wait until I see her again – I haven’t spanked her for years, but that’s about to change!”
She raised one arm and wiped perspiration off her brow. “Help me with the chores, Jemima. I have fifteen pies to finish before the bake sale tomorrow, and I don’t have time to do anything else. Go out and gather the eggs, and get a basket of greens for tonight, and when you finish that I need you to make lunch.” She paused and closed her eyes. “Oh! Why I ever agreed to do so many baked goods, all at once, I don’t know! It sounded like such a good idea at the time!”
Jemima leaned in and kissed her mother’s cheek. “It still is,” she told her. “I’ll wash up and start right away.”
“Hurry,” her mother sighed.
Jemima ran quickly up the stairs, ducked into the bathroom, and gave herself a quick cat bath in front of the bathroom mirror.
But when she met her own eyes in the glass, she gasped to see the girl staring back at her. Her father had been right: she looked a mess. Her cap was all crooked, and her hair was all over, her eyes looked wild and she was flushed. She put one palm to her cheek, to cool it.
She lowered her head and pinched her lips together angrily, and washed her hands a little too vigorously.
Then she walked into her own bedroom and closed the door behind her. She dug out the money that Mr. Satterwhite had given her for the dolls and tucked it away in the little hidden panel in the wall.
She frowned. There were the official-looking letters from the auction house, just where she had left them. But the whole thing was trouble, and the sooner she could sell the George Washington letter and have done with it, the better she’d like it!
She took the little panel in her hand, but as she moved to fasten it, another piece of paper came fluttering out onto the floor.
She bent down to pick it up. It was the business card the crazy Englischer had given to her. Her eyes darkened, and on an angry impulse, she pinched the little card between her fingers and tore it right in two.
That gave her a certain pleasure, but then the thought occurred to her: she couldn’t just throw the pieces away, because if someone found them, how would she explain them?
Jemima pushed her lip into a pout that would have driven her admirers to frenzy had they seen it, and reluctantly pushed the torn pieces in with the other papers. She could hide them there, until she could safely destroy them.
She replaced the panel with a bit more force than was required, and turned her lips down in distress.
Crazy Englisch reporter – the very idea!
“Jemima!”
Her mother’s voice floated up from downstairs, and Jemima took a deep breath, and shook her skirts out briskly, as if shaking off a distasteful memory. Then she hurried downstairs, and put the thought of the morning’s shocking events from her mind.
Or, at least, she tried to put them from her mind. She found, to her dismay, that it was easier said than done. Confusion swirled in her brain, making it impossible to concentrate on her work.
She collected a few eggs in the hen house, but soon had to stop. The bewildered prayer welling up in her had to come out.
Why, God?
Jemima closed her eyes and pressed her brow against one of the hens. It was downy and warm, but it gave her no answer.
Why did this happen? Didn’t You tell me to sell the letter? Wasn’t Your message as clear as day? And weren’t You the one making the Englischer help me?
But if that’s true, then why did this happen? It ruins everything!
She opened her eyes, but she wasn’t seeing the dim interior of the hen house. She was seeing a pair of bright blue eyes, glowing like electricity. Insane eyes.
Lord, what can I do? The wicked Englischer is the only person I know who can help me sell the letter. What now?
The soft muttering of the hens gave her no clue as to the answer. She shook her head.
When she had finished gathering eggs, she went and knelt in the garden on her hands and knees, and picked cherry tomatoes and carrots. Every now and then she looked over her shoulder and out into the bushes at the edge of the yard.
And imagined that she saw a branch move.
Then grumbled under her breath, and returned to work.
Jemima yanked a carrot out of the ground. The more she thought about the Englischer, the angrier she got. She had never been so shocked in all her life, or so outraged. Some people thought that they were so big and important, or maybe so handsome, that they could treat other people any way they liked.
But they were wrong.
She leaned back on her heels and swiped the dirt off of her hands.
Some people were so full of hochmut and – her eye fell on a wheelbarrow – fertilizer that they didn’t care about other people’s feelings, or rights.
Only their own.
She muttered under her breath and shook her head angrily. Her father had been right, the Englisch were crazy and greedy and you couldn’t trust them when you were looking right at them, much less when your back was turned.
Her face went red, as that horrifying scenario flashed through her mind, and she yanked out another carrot.
