Thaddeus Lewis Mysteries 5-Book Bundle. Janet Kellough
“Have you said anything to her?”
“I’ve stopped saying anything, Thaddeus. If I open my mouth, all it does is cause tears and hard feelings, and then Will is upset, too.”
He looked around the kitchen, which was in its usual state of good order, and realized that it had been Betsy who had made it that way. Far from being a respite for her, his arrangements had instead landed her with more work.
His second-eldest son, Moses, had decamped in disgust. He had found work at a tannery in Picton and showed no sign of wanting to return to the farm.
“Too many bosses,” he said when asked what the problem had been. “Will tells you to do one thing, Ma tells you another, and then Nabby wants you to drop everything and do something for her. I can do what I’m told, but I can’t do three different things all at the same time.”
Lewis suggested to Will that they go over the farm accounts while he was there, “just so I can catch up on things,” he told his son, hoping that his conciliatory tone would set Will at his ease. The figures were encouraging, to his eye. There had been a good crop of wheat which had sold at a reasonable rate, and two calves had brought in an excellent sum. What he didn’t see was any reinvestment in seed or stock.
“Are you waiting for a better price?” he asked. “I’m not sure you want to wait too long. Prices are on the rise.”
But Will just shrugged.
“And what about the household? How is that going?” There had been a large flock of chickens that had come with the farm, and there should have been a summer surplus of eggs, a surplus that could be offered for sale in town, but he could see no indication of this sum in Will’s accounts.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I leave that to Nabby.”
That was fair enough, he supposed. Chickens were traditionally the responsibility of the housewife, and the proceeds from the sale of eggs kept peddlers like Isaac Simms in business. He went in search of his daughter-in-law. He found her sitting by the kitchen stove adding a lace edge to a finely embroidered piece of linen while Martha played at her feet. The little girl’s hair was bound up in elaborate braids, and tied with a bright yellow ribbon. Lewis wondered where it had come from. Hair ribbons weren’t something that had often found their way into his household.
“Nabby, I wondered if I might talk to you about the arrangements here.”
She looked up at him and smiled, but quickly went back to her busy work.
“I’ve just been over the farm accounts with Will, and now I’m trying to discover how you’re getting on with managing the household.”
“Oh, I leave all that to Will,” she said.
“No, I don’t mean the farm. That seems to be proceeding satisfactorily. I’m talking about the household expenses, the egg money and so forth. Is it enough to cover the extras?”
“Why, I don’t really know,” she said. “Mother Lewis takes care of all that, doesn’t she?” She shrugged. “There always seems to be enough of everything, and if there isn’t, I just order it from the store, or get it from the peddler.”
“So, you give the money to Mrs. Lewis, and let her manage it. Is that what you’re saying?”
She stopped her sewing and looked at him with astonishment. “What money? I fear I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I don’t have any money.”
Lewis stifled an urge to rip the fancy embroidered linen out of her hands. “The hens. They should have been producing more eggs than you could possibly use, and you should have been selling those in town. The money from that goes to the household.”
She went back to plunging her needle into the fabric. “Oh, I don’t like chickens — nasty, smelly creatures.”
“So you haven’t been selling any eggs?”
“I have no intention of going anywhere near the chickens, and even if I did I don’t see why I should have to walk all the way into town with a mess of eggs.”
“You know Mrs. Lewis can’t. And you know Mrs. Lewis can’t look after the chickens either. She’s not well enough.”
The girl didn’t reply, and Lewis realized that there was no egg money.
“What have you been doing with all the eggs? Did you at least put them down for the winter?”
Still no reply.
There weren’t many, obviously, because no one tended to the flock nor likely even bothered to collect eggs over and above what was needed for the table. He didn’t waste his time asking her about the kitchen garden, because he was reasonably certain that this girl wasn’t aware that there was one, and even if she were, she would have had no hand in the process of drying or pickling or putting in the root cellar. Poor Betsy had once again been saddled with it all.
“Well.” He was at a bit of a loss as to how to proceed. Nabby seemed unrepentant. No, not even that — unconcerned. “Well, things are going to have to change.”
He looked over at his son sitting at the table. A fine flush was creeping up his neck and spilling onto his cheeks. “You know it can’t go on like this, Will.” He knew now why there had been no purchases of seed or stock entered in the accounts. Nabby had spent all the money.
“So, are you going stop riding up and down the countryside and be the one to walk into town with the eggs?” Lewis looked into his son’s defiant face and realized that he planned to side with his wife, no matter what.
“I’m sorry, Will, but the plan was that the farm would support the family and there’s no reason that it shouldn’t. As far as I can see you’ve made a success of your part of it, and now the rest of the family has to pitch in. From what I hear, your mother has been doing more than her share. I don’t see why Nabby can’t at least tend the chickens and make the butter. It’s not as if she has anything else to do.”
“Nabby can’t. She’s not strong enough. And she’s even more delicate now. She can’t go flaunting herself around town with a babe on the way. I won’t allow it.” Will’s face reddened a little at this — the news that they were expecting a child.
“An expectant mother should retire until after the blessed event,” Nabby added. “It’s not seemly to go out in company in this state.”
This was such utter nonsense that Lewis again was at a loss for words, but it also reflected something he was beginning to encounter on his long rounds — this idea that the natural processes that women went through were somehow shameful and should be kept from public view, as though no one wanted to admit where children came from in spite of the fact that they all arrived the same way. It went hand in hand with the notion of keeping women at home by the hearth, as though they were not partners in a marriage, but possessions, admired for their ability to produce children — but only after the fact, when the babes were safely delivered, never during or, strike even the thought of it, at the beginning of the process.
If only Sarah were here, he thought. She would have lit into her brother, booted her sister-in-law into action, and given them both a piece of her mind. He admired Betsy’s forbearance, for he could see that she was ready to explode but knew she shouldn’t and couldn’t, for it would only make matters worse.
“I see,” he said finally. “Very well. Something else will have to be done, then, won’t it? Right now the most important thing is to put money back into stock, and that means that you’re going to have to live on whatever the farm produced last season until the new crops come in. And I suggest that someone see to the chickens, if they haven’t all been picked off by hawks and weasels.”
“But I need new clothes,” Nabby said. “I don’t fit into my old ones anymore. And I need things for the baby, too. And what about Martha? She’s growing so fast, she grows right out of her things. Why I had to throw away her Sunday dress just