Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray Read Online Free PDF

Arlington. But I loved the beauty of his daydream all the same.
    A flash of pink caught my eye, and I looked up to see Selina running from the house.
    “Selina!” I caught up with her and found her trembling, one finger dripping blood. “What on earth happened?”
    She was crying so hard I could barely make out her story. Finally I understood that my mother had given her the cream silk dressing gown with orders to hem it. The needle had slipped and stabbed the poor child’s finger, and blood had smeared the hem. The dressing gown was ruined.
    “Now Missus will beat me.” Selina threw herself onto the ground in another fit of tears.
    I took her by the arms and hauled her to her feet. “Don’t be silly. She may be angry, but she won’t beat you.”
    “But your fancy new gown got blood on the hem. And Liza said it was real silk and cost a fortune.”
    “It was expensive, but it’s hardly worth a fortune.” I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her. “Dry your face and let’s go back to the house.”
    “I can’t go back.”
    “What will you do, then? Hide in the garden forever?”
    She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dress, an unfortunate habit that made me wince. “Got to hide somewhere.”
    “Whatever mistakes we make in life, Selina, we must own up to them. Running away won’t solve anything.”
    We started for the house.
    “Miss Mary, you gone to stop teaching me now?” Her round little face puckered with worry.
    “Of course not. Why would I?”
    “I just wondered.” Selina peered up at me, her eyelashes spiked with tears. “Wisht I could learn everything I want to know before you go away.”
    “After I’m married to Mr. Robert, Mother will continue your lessons. She mentioned just the other day that we need more books for all our young scholars.”
    “Oh.” Selina smiled at last and skipped along beside me. “When you get married you get babies. That’s what Thursday said. You gone get you some babies?”
    “That’s up to our heavenly Father. Such things are not for me to say.”
    “When you get married you gone kiss Mr. Robert?”
    Even though she was a child, such intimate questions made me blush. “No more questions. Let’s go inside. I have things to do.”
    I returned to my room and dashed off the remainder of my letter to my cousins. A reply to Robert would have to wait. To please Mother I arranged my hair and dressed in a pale blue frock trimmed in white lace.
    She had sent Ephraim to cut baskets of roses for us to sell in Washington before we attended the meeting of the American Colonization Society. Our flower sales had raised a modest sum directed toward training bondsmen for useful occupations and for purchasing their freedom in preparation for their relocation to Liberia. Several thousand families had already made the journey to a new life. But I was impatient for faster progress.
    Presently Mother joined me, and we set off for the city.
    Our flowers sold briskly, and when the hour of the meeting drew near, we left Daniel with the carriage and walked the short distance to the society’s offices, dodging loose cattle wandering about and mud-caked pigs rooting for garbage in the gutter.
    Outside on the street, a small but vocal crowd had gathered, and soon it was clear that they had come to disrupt the proceedings. An angular man dressed in the garb of a minor aristocrat stood in the doorway, blocking our path. His sunken cheeks and piercing eyes gave him a slightly feral look.
    “Please excuse us,” Mother said. “We don’t wish to be late.”
    He glowered at us. “You’re the Custis women. I recognize you from the last picnic at Arlington Spring.”
    “Since you have availed yourself of my father’s hospitality, surely you won’t wish to disrupt our afternoon,” I said. “Kindly step aside, sir.”
    “So you can make plans to send the Negroes packing.”
    “It is not my first choice, but so long as they cannot be fully accepted as free