Crewel Yule Read Online Free PDF

Jill.
    “Are you all right?” he asked breathlessly. “I am soooo sorry! I hit my brakes but the truck just ignored it. Are any of y’alls hurt?”
    “No, we’re okay,” said Jill. “Are you hurt?”
    “No, ma’ am.”
    “Good. May I see your driver’s license, please?”
    This was said so crisply, the young man frowned at her. “I beg y’all’s pardon?”
    “Sorry, force of habit. Back home I’m a police officer. I hope you’re insured?”
    “Oh, sweet Jesus, a cop. Yes, ma’am, I’m insured.”
    They exchanged identification and insurance information. Jill made careful notes and the young man, seeing her do so, went back to his car for a notebook so he could do likewise. Betsy felt her feet getting wet and cold, so she went back to the Sable.
    Jill and Godwin joined her a few minutes later. “Jill,” began Betsy.
    “I think we’re closer to your place than mine,” said Jill.
    They were, though not by much. And the Consulate was at the top of a very steep, winding road. The Sable tried, and Jill was good, but at last she wrestled it to the side and set the front wheel tread firmly against the curb. “I’m afraid we have to walk from here.”
    “And you’re staying with me tonight,” said Betsy. “These people have no idea how to drive in this stuff, and I couldn’t stand it if you got into another accident trying to get back to your place.”
    “I was going to ask to stay if you didn’t offer.”
    They stopped at the check-in counter to get Jill a room. But the night clerk, a tall black woman with a kind voice, said they were full. “The couch in your suite pulls out into a bed,” she said.
    Jill said, “I’ll take it.”
    “No, I’ll take it,” said Godwin. “Girls of a feather and all that.”
    Betsy registered Jill as a third party and the night clerk, on looking at Betsy’s credit card said, “There’s an envelope for you.”
    Betsy opened it in the glass-sided elevator going up to nine. It was a slim booklet of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven paper with a plastic comb binding on one side. The front cover read “Management and Hiring” and was ornamented with a round gold sticker with EARTH THREADS and BETSY C. STINNER printed on it in black letters.
    “Oh, this must be the handout from one of the classes we missed!” said Betsy. “How nice of her to get it to me.”
    She flipped through the booklet, which consisted of lists of rules stated in simple language and printed in bold type. Picking one at random, she read, “Never ever put off a problem. Problems put off only tend to get larger. Get to the root.” Well, that was true enough.
    The night clerk had given Jill an emergency kit of toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, and deodorant. Betsy had brought a nightgown as well as pajamas, so she loaned Jill the former.
    But tired as everyone was, they were too shaken by the ride back from the Grand Ole Opry Hotel to go right to bed. They sat up and watched the Weather Channel exclaim over the massive winter storm that had stalled over the Midwest. Airports were closed from Denver to Indianapolis, and from Chicago to Nashville.
    Godwin, gorgeous in magenta silk pajamas and matching robe, said, “Good thing we came back when we did, boss, or we’d never get to spend a dime at the Market.” He added, to Jill, “I’ll bring you some catalog sheets tomorrow and you can pick out some stuff. We’ll let you buy it for whatever they sell it to us for.”
    “Thanks,” Jill said. “Maybe they’ll have the main streets plowed by tomorrow afternoon and I can get back to my hotel.”
    Godwin snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding. This is the south, darlin’. There’s a probably not a for-real snow plow in the whole city. When it snows, everyone stays home till it melts, which it usually does the next day. They get maybe one snowfall a winter, and never anything like this.”
    Jill looked at the window. “What, never?”
    Godwin, on cue, sang the HMS Pinafore captain’s reply,