really any of his business and he gently tried to steer the conversation back to the original purpose of the meeting. But he did wonder what would happen to the Sully Railroad Station if Mr. Plews could make his accusations stick. He would probably just be paid off, Thaddeus guessed. The railway company appeared to have no end of funds at their disposal, so what was a little extra to make a problem go away? And that, he decided, was probably what Plews was angling for.
The road that wound its way along the shore of Lake Ontario was kept in reasonable repair, and after the conclusion of the meeting, he made good time, arriving back in Cobourg just before suppertime. He stabled and fed his horse, then walked across the yard to the manse. To his surprise, James Small was standing just inside the back porch, a pie in his hand. Martha leaned against the jamb of the door that led into the kitchen. Small seemed flustered when he saw Thaddeus.
“Mr. Lewis,” he stammered. “I’m surprised to see you so soon.”
“You too,” Thaddeus said. Small must have galloped through his appointments and galloped right home again.
“Mother’s just sent over an apple pie,” Small said, whisking away the cloth that covered the pan and holding it out for Thaddeus to see, as if he had been challenged somehow about what he was carrying and needed to justify his presence.
“Excellent!” Thaddeus said. A pie was always a welcome thing.
“Thank you, Mr. Small,” Martha said and reached for the pan. “And tell your mother I’m very much obliged.”
Small nodded at her, and then at Thaddeus, before he stumbled out the door.
Thaddeus kicked off his boots and followed Martha into the kitchen. “What was that all about?”
She sighed. “That’s twice now he’s made an excuse to come over here. It’s a nuisance really, except that both times he brought something — first a box of kindling, and now a pie.”
“Ah, I see.” Apparently James Small had taken a fancy to Martha. “Is this going to be a problem?” She seemed not just indifferent to, but downright annoyed by, the young man’s attentions. “Should I speak to him?”
“I don’t think so,” Martha said. “I haven’t given him the slightest encouragement. Nor will I.” She giggled a little. “Have you noticed that his Adam’s apple bobs up and down when he talks? I can’t help staring at it, and then I miss what he’s saying to me.”
She was right. It did. Thaddeus had become mesmerized by it once or twice himself. He hoped Small wouldn’t be too insistent and that there would be no hard feelings over Martha’s rejection. It could make their working relationship awkward if Small took offence, or persisted in spite of her discouragement.
“Besides,” Martha went on, “he’s old.”
Thaddeus laughed. “He’s twenty-three!”
Martha looked at him solemnly. “And I’m fifteen. Far too young to have any young man coming to the door, much less an old one of twenty-three.”
“That’s absolutely correct, my dear.” He knew he was being teased, but he did wonder again if he had taken on more than he bargained for.
“Anyway, I hadn’t expected to see you quite so soon,” she said. “I was going to melt some cheese on some bread and call that my supper.”
“That sounds fine, if we can have some of that pie for dessert.”
“I’ll brew some tea for you first.”
Thaddeus walked over to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair, but was suddenly struck with the realization that something was different. It took him a few moments to work out what it was.
“Did you put different curtains in here?” he asked. The window had been draped in a worn and yellowed fabric that blocked most of the light. Now only the bottom pane was covered, and with a far lighter material.
“Yes. Those came from the back bedroom. They washed up better than the ones that were there, so I switched them. It’s lovely in the morning — the sun pours in through that window.”
“Good idea,” he said. It was something that would never have occurred to him to do. “They look nice.”
He sat down and reached for the newspapers that Martha had left on the table. He had seen only one or two papers in the days he had been away, and then he had not been able to do anything more than glance at them. It would have been rude to do otherwise in someone else’s home; he was expected to make polite conversation, to comment on the fineness of the meal, and to lead the family in prayer, not sit with his nose stuck in their reading material. Now he looked forward to a steaming cup of tea and a bite to eat, all consumed while devouring the latest news and the commentary on it. It was a luxury to take the papers, but one that he was reluctant to forego.
The Cobourg Star had only a brief article on the matter of the Plews lawsuit, stating only the barest of the details. Thaddeus wondered what the Sully neighbourhood was making of the whole affair. George Howell was not a particularly popular figure to begin with, apparently, and his seemingly unscrupulous land deal seemed to have uncovered a tangled web of questions, none of which had been answered by the newspaper. It didn’t seem to matter, as far as the town fathers were concerned. Thaddeus discovered in a second article that they were prepared to pour another forty thousand pounds of municipal money into the railway project, and in a third, that they had unveiled plans to build a substantial town hall to reflect the glory that would soon be Cobourg’s. This seemed rash to Thaddeus. Better to wait and see whether the bridge fell down and the lines heaved first.
Bemused, he turned to the next page, which featured the international news. Trouble was brewing on the Crimean Peninsula, and it looked as though France and England were prepared to go to war with Russia in a complicated dispute that somehow involved the rights of Christians in Jerusalem. Although this was something that Thaddeus was all in favour of, his understanding was that the city was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and he couldn’t quite follow the article well enough to discover how so many other countries had become embroiled in the dispute. The Crimea was nowhere near Jerusalem. Or at least he didn’t think it was. Just another of Britain’s imperial squabbles, he decided, and unlikely to affect Canada. He leafed through the paper looking for reading that was a little less taxing, but he had exhausted the intellectual offerings of The Star. The rest of the paper was filled with social news and advertisements.
He reached for the Toronto Globe. Tucked beneath it was a small volume. Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly, he read. It was a popular novel, he knew, a tale that exposed the evils of slavery.
“Is this yours?” he asked.
Martha glanced at the book. “Oh, that’s where it went. Yes, it’s mine now, I suppose. One of the guests left it at the hotel, but we couldn’t ever figure out who it belonged to, so father gave it to me.”
“Have you read it?”
“About five times. Whenever I get tired of the papers and don’t have anything new to read, I go back to my old favourites.”
Thaddeus was surprised. “You read the newspapers?”
“Yes, of course. They’re here anyway. You needn’t bother reading them yourself. Just ask me what you want to know and I’ll tell you all about it.” She set his tea in front of him.
