Wishes Read Online Free PDF Page B

of this extraordinarily handsome man, and she quite suddenly very much wanted to go. Just once she’d like to go out for an evening. “All right,” she whispered.
    He smiled at her as he stood, and even in the darkness she could see his dimple. “Good,” he said. “I’m very pleased. I’ll be looking forward to it. Wear something beautiful.”
    “I don’t have anything…” She didn’t finish. “I will look forward to the evening also,” she whispered.
    He smiled again, put his hands in his pockets, and, whistling, left the garden.
    Nellie sat where she was for a moment. What an extraordinary man, she thought. What a very unusual man.
    She leaned back in the swing, smelling the sweet fragrance of the flowers. She was going to the ball with a man. And not just any man. Not the butcher’s fat son Terel was always suggesting, or the grocer’s seventeen-year-old son who sometimes looked at Nellie with big eyes, and not the sixty-year-old man her father had once introduced her to. Not the—
    “Nellie! Where have you been?” Terel demanded, standing over her in the darkness. “We have been looking all over for you. Anna is destroying the kitchen, and Father wants you to watch her, and I need you to unlace my dress. We’re suffering while you sit here daydreaming. Sometimes, Nellie, I don’t think you care about anyone but yourself.”
    “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll straighten out Anna.” Reluctantly she left the swing and the garden and went back to the very real world inside the house.
    It was hours later that she got the kitchen straight, had listened to another of her father’s lectures about her eating, and was finally able to get to Terel’s room.
    “I got Anna to undo my laces,” Terel said bitterly, sitting in her robe and gown before her mirror and brushing her hair.
    Nellie began to pick up Terel’s clothes. She was very tired and longed to take a bath and go to bed.
    “Wasn’t he divine?” Terel said.
    “Who?”
    “Mr. Montgomery, of course. Oh, Nellie, aren’t you ever aware of anything that goes on?”
    “He was very nice, yes.”
    “Nice? He was much more than nice. I’ve never seen a better-looking man in my life, except maybe Dr. Westfield, but he’s taken. Father says he thinks there’s money in his background.”
    “I think Dr. Westfield is quite comfortable,” Nellie said tiredly.
    “Not Dr. Westfield! Nellie, why don’t you listen sometimes? Father thinks Mr. Montgomery has money. I can’t imagine why he’d consider a job with Father if he has money unless…”
    “Unless what?”
    “Well…I hate to say it myself, but did you see the way he looked at me during dinner?”
    Nellie, behind the wardrobe door, was glad Terel couldn’t see her face. “No, I’m afraid I didn’t see, but Terel, dear, you must be used to men looking at you.”
    “Yes,” she said softly, looking at herself in the mirror. Mr. Montgomery had indeed looked at her, but not in the way men often looked at her. In fact, there was something almost chilling about the way he’d looked at her with those almost-black eyes of his.
    She put her hand to her throat. He would be a challenge to win, she thought.
    “I wonder what his name is,” Terel murmured.
    “Jace,” Nellie said before she thought.
    Terel looked at her sister in the mirror. Nellie was standing so that just her face was visible above the little screen by the washstand. In the candlelight Nellie was beautiful. Her skin was flawless, her lashes long, her lips full. Glancing back at her own reflection, Terel knew she wasn’t half as pretty as Nellie. Next to Nellie, Terel’s face was too long, her nose too sharp, and her skin wasn’t nearly as smooth.
    Terel opened a drawer to her dresser and withdrew a little bag of caramels, then went to Nellie and put her arm around her. “I’m sorry Father was such a beast at dinner. He didn’t have to tell Mr. Montgomery about how you’d eaten all the cake. You weren’t