In This Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

window.
    “I saw you talking with Hélène, I thought she might eat you with a spoon on the very spot where you stood!”
    “Spying on me!” he said.
    “It’s true, darling, but only while washing a smudge off the windowpane. I think she’s mad for you, but in an altogether decent way, of course.”
    He judged Cynthia’s eyes to be precisely the color of chicory blossoms, soon to appear in the fields around Mitford. He set the bread in a chair and bounded to her and took her in his arms. “Why would you be jealous of me, for goodness’ sake?”
    He was laughing as he said it, but he really wanted to know, needed to know; he suddenly craved to hear her say something that would knock his socks off. She was good at that…
    “But I’m not jealous of you at all!”
    “You’re not?”
    “Of course not! Hélène is a lovely woman who’s scarcely ever known a decent man until she met her neighbor. Which is exactly the way I felt when I started popping through the hedge.”
    Ah. Popping through the hedge. That had been the modus operandi of their courtship; he felt positively nostalgic just hearing her mention the hedge.
    “Besides, Timothy, I know you’ll love me ’til death do us part, and then forever.”
    She put her arms around his neck and he kissed her tenderly, inhaling her warm scent.
    But since she’d brought it up, he would have liked her to be jealous—if only a little.
     
    He broke the news as they sat at the kitchen table.
    “Not again!” wailed Puny. “Y’all jis’ went off a little bit ago, I cain’t even think about you goin’ off ag’in!”
    “Just for a year,” he said, feeling like a traitor.
    “Yessir, Rev’ren’, seems like we ain’t hardly got settled down from th’ last time you went off,” said Harley. Harley Welch was his friend, his handyman, his brother in the Lord, his neighbor who lived in Hélène Pringle’s basement.
    “We’re going to work with children who’ve been terribly hurt by their circumstances,” Cynthia explained. “It’s a wonderful program that will help families find healing.”
    “But you got children right here,” said Puny, struggling to understand. “I mean, they’re not really hurt or anything, even if I did spank Sassy somethin’ awful for playin’ with matches.”
    Puny’s red-haired twins, Sissy and Sassy, had been part of the Kavanagh household since birth. Now they usually came home each day to the yellow house, from Mitford School’s second grade.
    Father Tim glanced at Cynthia, who was clearly sobered by the gloomy response to their news. Didn’t they have a perfect right to do whatever they pleased? Didn’t they deserve the freedom to pursue God’s plan for their lives? And here were two lower lips positively hanging to the floor.
    Harley shook his head and sighed.
    “Now, listen !” Father Tim said in his pulpit voice.
    Aha! That was the ticket, that got their attention. From now on, it would be tell, don’t ask!
    “We’re going to Tennessee, but we can’t do it without you. No, indeed, we’d be in a pickle. In truth, if the Lord hadn’t provided the two of you to care for things around here, I doubt if we’d be able to answer this call.
    “Harley, you’re to keep the two yards mowed, pruned up, and fertilized.
    “Puny, you’re to do the outstanding job you did while we were in Whitecap! We’ll come home on frequent weekends as hungry as bears, so load up the refrigerator and don’t spare the tomato aspic!
    “Harley…”
    “Yessir?” Harley had snapped to.
    “Be sure and take Dooley’s granpaw his livermush, as Dooley will be at Meadowgate with the Owens this summer. Further, I’d like you to go out to the farm now and again and let Marge Owen feed you some chicken pie, she said she’d look forward to it.”
    Harley stood bolt upright from the chair. “Yessir, Rev’rend!” He thought Harley might give a salute.
    “Puny! You can handle the job?”
    “Oh, yessir, I can, and be glad to!” Color