The Hired Girl(3)

The minister was a pink-faced man and he talked slow. He spoke about the Pearl of Great Price, and then he started talking about treasure and how where our treasure was, our hearts should be. I thought about how I didn’t go to St. Mary’s because it was nine miles off and how if I was a Christian martyr, I’d ask Father for the horses, even though he’d be unkind. Maybe I’d walk, even. I started to repent, but then the minister gave his sermon another twist, and it turned out what he was really after was more money in the collection plate. Then I felt awkward because I hadn’t brought any money with me, and I was worried that people would stare at me when the plate went round. Father never gives me any money because he says what does a girl who is given everything want with money. When Ma was alive the egg money was hers, and I’m the one who cleans the chicken house and gathers the eggs and makes the mash for the hens. But Father won’t let me have the egg money.

I fell into a daydream about what I’d do if the egg money was mine. I’d buy cloth for a new dress. A stripe would be best because if you match the stripes and set them right, you can make your waist look smaller. I think I could get it right if I tried. I’d buy books, too. There’s a store in Lancaster that has books that only cost a nickel. Miss Chandler says those books are trivial and unwholesome and she hopes I will never read them. I wonder what’s in them. I have three books — the ones she gave me — plus Ma’s Bible, and I just ache to read more. Miss Chandler used to lend me books. I’d hoped that if I gave back her handkerchief she might say we could go on being friends, even if I can’t come to school anymore.

Miss Chandler has a little bookcase full of books in her rooms. At the end of school, she invited all us older girls — Lucy and Hazel and Alice and little Rebecca Green, who has consumption but wasn’t too sick to come — to her boardinghouse. We had chicken salad and ice cream and looked at photographs of Europe on the stereopticon. And we passed around a beautiful poem called “The Eve of St. Agnes” and read it aloud, and I thought it was the most wonderful poem I ever read. Even Lucy and Hazel were civil to me, and I wished the evening would never come to an end.

But of course it did. And now I can’t go back to school. And Miss Chandler wasn’t in the church, not this week. I waited under the oak tree and watched everyone come out to be sure. Alice waved to me, and I waved back, but I didn’t go forward to speak to her. I went home and fixed dinner for the men.



Wednesday, June the fourteenth, 1911

I didn’t think it would be so hard to write in this diary every day. Late spring is always busy on the farm. I spend my days rushing from one have-to to the next have-to. When I can snatch a moment between them, I read one of dear Miss Chandler’s books. I’d rather read than write.

My books aren’t exactly prize books, because our school doesn’t hand out prize books. But for the past three years, Miss Chandler has taken me aside, privately, and given me a book at the end of the year. I told her we had none at home, and I think she was sorry for me. The books she gave me are bound in soft, limp leather, with thin paper, gold edged and elegant, like Bible pages. I have Jane Eyre — that was the first year — and Dombey and Son — that was the second year — and Ivanhoe — that was last year. I’ve read and reread them all, but Jane Eyre is the best, because it’s the most exciting and Jane is just like me. Ivanhoe has dull patches, but it’s very thrilling when Brian de Bois-Guilbert carries off the noble Jewess Rebecca because of his unbridled passion. Dombey and Son is good, but it makes me feel guilty because I’m not as good as Florence Dombey. I like best the part where her father strikes her and she runs away to Captain Cuttle. He takes such good care of her. Sometimes at night I like to pretend I’m Florence Dombey, lying beautifully asleep in a clean white bed, with Captain Cuttle tiptoeing around, making me a roasted fowl.

But Father never strikes me, thank heavens. He used to whip the boys when they were younger, but Ma wouldn’t let him lay a hand on me. She said it wasn’t modest for a man to whip a girl. So Father never did, but he said I was too big for my britches even though I didn’t wear any. That’s his idea of humor — to say something insulting and unrefined. I wish I hadn’t written it in this book.

Today I will contemplate the view from the kitchen window and describe the beauties of nature. I guess that’s refined enough for anybody. I’m sitting on the kitchen table because I just gave the floor a good scrub, and it’s still wet. Father is in town buying a part for one of his machines, and the boys are working in the lower field. I can watch them from the window, so they won’t come back to the house and catch me idling.