“No, nothing like that. I do spend a lot of time in the woods.”
She again waited for him to embellish, wanting to know “Doing what?” but
he did not seem inclined to volunteer information about himself
“We haven’t been into town yet,” she said. “We’ll have to go soon, get some
milk, eggs, and butter.”
“Well, I warned you, it isn’t much of a town,” he said.
They caught up with Mourning and Olivia took the lead. It wasn’t long before
Olivia said to Mourning, “You’d better leave Dixby here, where it’s easy for him
to turn around,” and continued toward the dead buck. In her haste, she let her dress catch on a branch and stopped to extricate herself, examining the tear in the fabric and muttering about stupid women’s dresses.
“So why are you wearing one?” Jeremy asked.
“What else would I wear?”
“I know women who have a seamstress run up trousers for them. At least for
when they’re working. Or riding.”
Olivia was barely able to hide her shock and did not respond.
“There it is,” she said, pointing at her buck, but feeling less excited than she
had a moment ago. What women?
Olivia left them to their bloody task and spent the walk home pondering what
Jeremy had said. Women who wore trousers? Who ever heard of such a thing?
The guidebooks made no mention of it. Maybe he’d been fooling with her. And
then the truly troubling question kept repeating itself – what women? If he had
no family, he couldn’t have been referring to sisters or cousins. And what were
those women doing that they needed to wear trousers?
Olivia had begun to see herself as special – resourceful and adventurous. Now
that feeling abandoned her. She was nothing but a boring girl who obeyed the rules and whined a lot. She imagined one of those trouser-clad women strolling
through the woods with Jeremy and riding bareback with him to Lake Huron, to
swim in her birthday suit.
When she reached the cabin she washed her hands and face, lit two lanterns,
and searched for her mirror. It was the first time since leaving home that she had
bothered to look at her reflection and she was pleasantly surprised. She couldn’t
see that the past few days had made her look as worn down as she felt. It was a
good thing she’d done as Mourning said and started wearing her straw bonnet when she was out in the sun. She brushed her hair, rubbed some powder over her
teeth, and rinsed her mouth. Some of the women in Five Rocks dusted their faces
with flour and then wetted red crepe paper and rubbed their cheeks with it to make them rosy. Olivia stared in the mirror and wondered if that might make her
look any better. Finally she made a face at herself and stood up. Those women
looked ridiculous. Besides, she didn’t have any red crepe paper. Enough wasting
time on nonsense. She looked like she looked. If he didn’t like it, too bad.
She decided to celebrate their first real meal – and first dinner guest – by eating inside. Maybe sitting at a properly set table would remind Mourning that
some people actually used utensils to move food from plate to mouth and didn’t
regard their fork as a giant toothpick. She wished they had some honey wine with which to toast Uncle Scruggs and Aunt Lydia Ann.
A small pouch lay on the table. She opened it and breathed in the heavenly aroma of Jeremy’s coffee beans, before setting them on the counter next to the coffee grinder. She would serve it to them later, outside, together with one of the
