Mrs. Engels Read Online Free PDF Page A

and bringing in and fettling about, the little creature attends to all of their little wants, and she does it on her own, too, with no others to aid her (for it seems that with servants, if not with any other portion of life, Jenny knows how to make a saving).
    Ah, the poor wee puppet! The petty pocket! The pigwidgeon! Nim—I can’t deny it!—has succeeded in fascinating my attention. Despite my strict resolve to be cool in her company—“Don’t notice her,” I says to myself whenever she comes in—I always find myself flushed and susceptible. Whether it be the quiet show she makes of her modesty or the delicate manner with which she wields her influence, or her sad-sad-secret (now so-so-public) that cuts a perilous edge around her china figure; whatever it is, she absorbs me, and I’m fain to get her alone. I must find a moment, I think. I must separate her and present myself proper to her. I must hold out a hand. I must get an idea. What is the nature of your powers? What do you do that makes the women bend to your will and the men so heated to mount you?
    My chance comes now. The a.m. of another empty day. Jenny off for her nap. The Men locked into the study upstairs. The Girls gone to play shuttlecock in the garden for want of something else going on. I’m supposed to be watching them and learning what’s what, only I know my break when it comes and make an excuse of my bladder.
    I find her sat on a stool in front of an open cupboard in the storeroom, drooped and snoring over a book that lies on her lap. Her dress is tucked up and the laces of her boots are loosened. She’s taking her two minutes, and I’m sorry to have come in on her.
    â€œCan I help you, Mrs. Burns?” she says before I can steal away. Her face is bleary, but her voice is bright, not a hint of sleep in it.
    â€œOh, Nim, I—”
    Apologize, is what I want to do, for barging in and robbing her leisure. But more than that, I want to apologize for Frederick. There’s no excuse for the shabby treatment he’s been giving her. It’s as if he believes that by overlooking her, by paying no regard to her, by passing orders for her through the rest of us, he’ll convince us once and for all that she means naught to him, that not even his words are worthy of her (when, in fact, there’s not a single word he speaks that doesn’t fly right at her, that doesn’t explode about her like fireworks, that, in the noise and the bright light, doesn’t call to our minds that day some twenty years ago when her charms got such a hard handle on him that he decided the only means of release was to lift up her skirts and put his seed inside of her, not a single thought given to the harvest such behaving so unfortunate bears). Aye, that’s what I want to do, apologize for all of Frederick’s behaving . But instead I fumble with my tongue and shrink within myself and end up saying, “So how do you find it here? Do you go much to the parks?”
    With red-shot eyes she pins me, and I hold her stare, and we stay like this for a time; two maids across a storeroom floor.
    At last she closes her book and stands. “It’s nearly time for the picnic, Mrs. Burns.” She checks the floor around her and rummages in her pockets, looking to see if she’s dropped anything. “We’re to gather in the parlor,” she says. And when she unbends and sees me still standing here: “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable waiting up there?”
    Spread out on the couches, fidgeting and yawning and trying to ignore Karl’s pacing, we bide for Jenny. After forever has passed, she swishes in and kisses the air about us, a hand busying itself with a button of her coat.
    â€œIf we want to make the best of the afternoon we should set off immediately. It could be raining in an hour, and then we would have missed the fine spell, or?”
    Behind her, Karl widens his