Janet Quin-Harkin Read Online Free PDF Page B

already taken.
    “But if you care to stick around,” the pleasant, soft-spoken young clerk informed her, “we might be able to squeeze y’all in a little bitty corner someplace.” He smiled encouragingly. “And cabins do open up,” he said, still smiling. “There’s plenty of travellers who never make it to the boat.”
    “How come?” Libby asked naively.
    The smile did not falter. “They get themselves in fights or they get themselves robbed or they get themselves in card games or they get themselves the cholera,” he said. “There’s a whole lot of cholera on the river this year. Comes with all these Yankees passing through on their way to the gold.”
    “I’m sure the Yankees don’t bring cholera with them,” Libby said indignantly. “Our northern cities are very clean.”
    “For sure, ma’am,” the clerk drawled pleasantly, “but wherever you gets a whole mess of people crowded in one place there’s sure enough going to be the cholera there with them.”
    “I’ll be back in the morning, then,” Libby said stiffly and left the office.
    “Come, children,” she said, picking up the bags, which seemed to have increased in weight since she set out. “Hold onto the handles and stay close to me. We’re going to find a hotel.”
    “A hotel, Mama? I never went to a hotel,” Bliss sang excitedly.
    They set off from the dockside, dodging loaded carts and barrows, taking in the unfamiliar sights and smells of the city. The odor of roasting coffee mingled with the heady sweet scent of unknown flowers and less pleasant smells rising from the open ditches and drains. In the first narrow side street washing hung from ironwork balconies and a black maid appeared, yelling down to a black man passing below in a language Libby could not understand. The man looked up and yelled back, showing big white teeth in a smile. The maid called something else, then threw down a bucket of waste water, splashing near Libby as it hit and ran into the open drain.
    “It smells bad here, Mama,” Eden commented.
    Bliss wrinkled her button of a nose. “It smells disgusting,” she said, making Libby laugh.
    “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry, we’ll see a hotel soon. I don’t want to go too far from the harbor in case we lose our chance at a cabin on that boat.”
    “Will we see Papa soon?” Bliss asked, tugging at the straps of the carryall.
    “Not yet,” Libby said. “We must be patient.”
    “I’ve been patient a long while,” Bliss said, stomping in a puddle.
    “Bliss, don’t do that, you’re making your petticoat dirty and Mama can’t get it washed for you,” Eden scolded.
    At a crossroad Libby halted. To her right was a broad street of elegant homes, a glimpse of an open square with a statue and gardens in it, reminding her painfully of Boston and civilization. If only there was someone she knew in this strange city, someone of her own social class she could go to with an introduction and spend a comfortable night. But there wasn’t, and she didn’t want her parents to find out where she was.
    “This way,” she said, steering the children away from that square, down another narrow street.
    “It’s going to rain, Mama,” Eden said. “I felt a drop on my face.”
    At that moment there was an ominous rumble of thunder and the skies opened. A solid sheet of rain fell, big fat drops bouncing off the cobbles and thundering on iron porch roofs. Libby dragged the girls under an overhanging balcony. In no time at all the water covered the whole street and the foul-smelling contents of the drains began to overflow to meet the flood water. Remembering what the clerk had said about cholera, Libby looked up and down the street. Two doors down, a small sign advertised Hotel St. Pierre. They ran across to it, getting drenched in the few yard’s sprint.
    “I’d like a room for the night,” Libby told the large, sleepy-eyed woman who appeared when she rang the bell.
    “A room? You?” the woman