With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

them also.
    If it was not possible to shop the stores personally, there was always the catalog and its tens of thousands of items—everything from a rubber hairpin to a plow or piano. Ready-made clothes were finally replacing the homemade vintage. And who could resist the pictured articles of clothing, with their enticing descriptions? A woman of modest means could afford “the Latest Style Foulard Percale day dress [one-piece garment as opposed to skirt and waist] with puff-top sleeves, neat turned-down collar, three rows of fancy serpentine braid across bust and back forming yoke; plaited effect from yoke to waist; butterfly epaulets extending over sleeves,” costing only $1.15. As for the massive furniture of the day, a solid oak parlor table cost $1.48, a six-piece parlor “suit,”—sofa, easy rocker, large arm chair, and two parlor chairs—having “easy spring seats with hard edges, the fronts being of plush, handsomely corded; casters free,” cost but $11.35 and could be received at the post office of the most remote settler.
    Here, in about seven hundred closely printed pages, was reading material enough to keep an isolated household fascinated for weeks. The far-ranging rural clientele pored over the “wish book” so diligently and avidly that it became known as the prairie bible and the bible of the bush. The choices were staggering. To buy simple sugar, for example, required earnest deliberation and serious decision making. One must choose:
    Cubes
    Cut Loaf
    XXXX Powdered
    Standard Powdered
    Fine Granulated
    Standard Granulated
    Mould A
    Confectioners’ A
    Off A
    White Phoenix Extra
    Phoenix C No. 2
    Yellow No. 3
    Yellow No. 4
    Yellow No. 5
    Golden Brown No. 6
    Cuban Dark No. 7
    What an age in which to live! Surely no other generation was as blessed. Or as burdened, for the pictured wares were enticing, and “more is better” was the hue and cry of the day.
    When Kerry, in Gideon’s arms, was carried across an Axminster rug, she was no more impressed by its richness than by the China straw matting that had graced her landlady’s floor for ten cents a yard. Settled by Gideon, at his mistress’s command, on an elegant upholstered piece called a Turkish Tete-a-Tete, Kerry was no more impressed by its plush “bands and rolls and heavy worsted fringe” than by Mrs. Peabody’s “lounge” upholstered in carpet of questionable age and quality. But it all felt right, good, and blissfully comforting to the poor waif that was Kerry Ferne.
    Left alone while her aunt saw to the disposing of her niece’s bits and pieces, Kerry shut her eyes in utmost peace and hardly wakened when she was picked up again and carried upstairs. Here, in a quiet, tasteful room that had largely escaped the indulgences of the rest of the house, she was undressed by a round-faced, hefty woman who kept murmuring such things as “scandalous,” “burn these,” and “poor wee lass.” But it felt right, good, and blissfully comforting. When a soft, dainty, white gown was slipped over her head and her senses told her it wasn’t her own Fels Naptha-washed nightie, when she was tucked into a bed where the linens had no lye odor but smelled faintly of lavender, Kerry’s final thought for the day was: “If Cordelia could see me now.” The church mouse slipped away forever as the weary child drifted off to the first sweet and dreamless sleep she had known since her father’s death and the beginning of the nightmare.

    Pulling off her long kid gloves and flexing her fingers before removing the pins that had held her monumental hat solidly on her head all day, Charlotte Maxwell laid these items into the hands of Mrs. Finch. As cook and general housekeeper, Mrs. Finch had the oversight of the great house with the help of Finch, her husband. Finch was general factotum, serving as butler when that was needed, handyman at times, and jack-of-all-trades, turning his hand to most anything. In the morning and evening he was available to act