The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

Harold was considered the family wit.
    “Give ’em something useful to do,” Jack echoed.
    “Shut up and eat,” their father ordered.
    Until she began attending the Wesleyan Chapel two years ago, Mercy had not known that there were families who actually prayed before meals and carried on pleasant conversation as they ate. Did those families know how blessed they were?
    She cleaned up the kitchen, put a pot of soup on the stove for supper, then went upstairs into her room. At the mirror over her chest of drawers, she stood untying the blue ribbon so she could comb her hair. She knew she was too old, at twenty-three, to tie her light brown hair at the nape of her neck, but it was so thick and curly that it tended to shed pins all day when she attempted a chignon. Nobody cares how I look anyway , she thought. Mother had been the only person to tell her she was pretty, but then, Mercy supposed all mothers told their daughters that. At least she hoped they did, for it had been nice to hear.
    After retying the ribbon, she stared at the mirror in a rare moment of self-scrutiny. The heavy-lidded eyes of her father and brothers had somehow bypassed her. While her own hazel eyes were not disproportionately small, they were fringed with short, wispy brown lashes that certainly did nothing to call attention to them. Two straight, fawn-colored slashes formed her eyebrows, and her nose turned slightly upward at the tip. Underneath curved a nondescript mouth with lips neither too heavy nor too thin. At least her complexion and teeth were good, for she was meticulous in her grooming, if only to prove to herself that being a Sanders did not mean a total lack of pride in one’s appearance.
    She went downstairs to the pantry next, where dozens of quart jars stood in neat rows on the shelves. Most were filled with the bounty of her well-tended vegetable garden, along with jams of sloeberry and crab apple, preserved pears and apples, and honey from the beehives behind the barn. Taking a basket from the bottom shelf, she set a jar of pickled beets at one end, some crab apple jam at the other, and wedged a loaf of raisin bread between them to keep the jars from knocking against each other.
    “Where you goin’, Mercy?” Edgar asked, coming into the kitchen for a dipper of water just as she turned the corner from the pantry.
    Mercy smiled. She loved her brothers, all of them, but felt particularly responsible for Jack and Edgar. If only she had come to know the Lord when they were much younger and still very pliable! For now, try as she might, she could not persuade them to accompany her to chapel. A contempt for religion was another legacy passed on to them by their father. Any conversations she attempted with them about her newfound faith were met with blank stares and much fidgeting. Their need for spiritual training was another reason Mercy had to persuade her father to allow the two youngest to go to school. At least there, they would have no choice but to sit through Vicar Phelps’s chapel services every Monday.
    “I’m going to Mrs. Brent’s,” she replied. “Would you ask Papa to let you come inside and stir the soup every now and then?”
    “All right,” he shrugged. “Why do you spend so much time with that old woman?”
    “Because she’s my friend.”
    But her friend was dying. Mrs. Brent, who lived at the end of Nettle Lane, was instrumental in getting Mercy to attend the Wesleyan Chapel. Every Sunday for years the elderly woman had passed by in a wagon pulled by two black dray horses driven by her caretaker, Elliott. If Mercy or one of her family happened to be outside, Mrs. Brent would have Elliott stop. “We’ve lots of room back here,” she would call, her wrinkled face bearing a sunny smile. Even Mercy’s father couldn’t bring himself to be rude, though he never accepted the invitation. But one day over two years ago, Mercy found herself sitting between the white-haired woman and her housemaid, Janet, in the