Sequence of Events (part five)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sequence of Events

Chapter One

A Personal Choice

(part five)

 

 

“Stanley gets the luck of the draw, for showing up unannounced. He’ll have to be a man.”

“Stanley brought me a gift.”

Phillip slid his braces off with a panache honed in a thousand cadged rooms, undid his shirt, and smiled from the bed.

Freda ignored this implication. “You had better not make Stanley nervous with all your prodding. I was about to take his money when you spoiled the mood.”

“We will take his money in good time. But you’ve never told me about these Carpenters.”

“Because I don’t know them. They don’t, apparently, know one another, socially speaking. Not one of Dolores’s family attended my father’s wedding.”

 

 

That had been the day her father, having placed himself under new management, decided also that sauce for the gander would be sauce for the gosling. Home life was to begin at once, a honeymoon deemed by Dolores bother, “a pleasure for the young”.

Her stepmother had taken her aside for a talk. Freda, dreading she was to be told the burden of womanhood, had schooled her face not to scrunch, not to invite further references to “hoydenish looks”.

“One generally says, I expect we will become good friends. I expect we will not. You are rather far along in years to form an attachment to a new mother. I hope we need not be enemies. And I see no prospect of that, unless you are a very provoking girl.”

Dolores gave a laugh. Freda, not suspecting humor, gave hers late, and received a different sort of look.

The Carpenters were gentry, on a modest and descending scale. The eldest son held a title, and was reasonably well-to-do. Stanley had been a curate. He might still be.

If she could earn the money Mr. Bruner promised, she would not share this news with Phillip. Dear Uncle Stanley was ashamed of his connection to Desanges—that, she could twig as readily as her mate. A light shined up an alley, where in former times she had walked only on the broad avenues.

She felt she was getting the hang of this job she had not yet agreed to take.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

 

 

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A Personal Choice

Sequence of Events (part one)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Stephanie Foster, 2017, 2021, 2026)