Hattie Ever After Read Online Free PDF

for this. I pulled away, shaking my head to clear the fog.
    “We’ll still write?” I touched my fingers to my lips as ifto impress that sweet kiss upon them forever, as one might preserve a rose between the pages of a book, hoping against hope this first kiss wasn’t to be our last.
    He tugged at the bill of his cap. “You can write,” he said. “But to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer.”
    And with that, Charlie Hawley left. Taking a good chunk of my foolish heart right along with him.

A Chop Suey Day
    June 24, 1919
Nearly to San Francisco
    Dear Perilee
,
    Today I have seen the ocean! Well, San Francisco Bay, but I believe that counts. You cannot imagine it. I thought it would be solid blue, like a flax field in bloom. But it would take a whole slew of colors from a painter’s palette to capture it: purples and greens and grays and blacks
.
    Not only have I
seen
the bay, I am
sailing
on it! In a ferry that we boarded after the train stopped in Oakland. The water rolls on as vast as Montana’s sky and yet we’ll be across it in well under an hour. Imaginethat! Except for the cries of the gulls, it feels very much as if I’m still on the train. Only I must say the ferry is a bit more posh, with a separate tearoom for ladies. I shared a pot of tea there with Maude—she’s the ingénue of the company
.
    Oh, I see the Ferry Building now! It’s crowned with an enormous clock tower standing like a lighthouse on a lonely bluff. However, this tower guards the second-busiest railroad station in the world. At least, that’s what the brochure here in the tearoom claims
.
    We are to disembark in a few minutes. I must close for now
.
    Exactly seventeen days had passed since I’d left Great Falls. There’d been stops in Portland and Redding and some towns whose names I’d already forgotten. Nothing in my journey had prepared me for the big city of San Francisco.
    Country mouse was the perfect description for me as I followed close on Maude’s heels, terrified I would be separated from the troupe and lost forever. I had never seen so many people in one place before.
    “Do close your mouth, Hattie,” scolded Miss Clare. “It’s most unbecoming.”
    I closed my mouth but kept my eyes wide open. I didn’t want to miss a thing. Think of the pages I could fill in my tablet! Oh, I couldn’t wait to write about the swirls of people and the sharp clean smell of seawater.
    We exited the building onto a U-shaped plaza laid with streetcar tracks. I glanced at Miss Clare to see if that was tobe our form of transport to the hotel, but she and Mr. Lancaster led us on to a stand of jitneys sufficient to carry a company of actors as well as their luggage and tools of the trade. As I was nudged forward to one of the vehicles, I spied a large white feather tipped in gray just in front of me. I quickly stooped to pick up this omen—appropriate for a young woman soaring into an unknown future—before being ushered into a car with Maude and a few others, including the new second boy, hired in Spokane to replace Cecil Hall. The second boy fell promptly asleep. Even though I was also done in from the long journey, I couldn’t imagine closing my eyes and missing one speck of this amazing metropolis. Five Great Falls could fit within San Francisco’s city limits, with space to spare. Each block we passed promised Grand Adventure. I had surely made the right decision in coming.
    The streets were peppered with flower carts bursting with color. “It looks like one big bouquet!” I blurted out.
    Maude smiled at my comment. “At Christmastime, it’s awash in violets, ten cents a bunch. You’d love it then.”
    “I love it now!” Turning back to the window, I caught sight of both horse-drawn wagons and engine-powered vehicles maneuvering the streets in patterns of pure chaos. But I didn’t witness one collision, or even a near miss. Clanging streetcar bells competed with newsboys shouting, “Dr.