A Drowned Maiden's Hair_ A Melodrama - Laura Amy Schlitz [15]
My hand is tired now. Please come home soon. Or if you can’t, please, please, please write me a letter.
Your loving —
Maud paused. Should she write daughter?
Your loving girl,
Maud Mary Flynn
Maud had never liked Sundays. At the Barbary Asylum, Sunday was a day of the utmost tedium, with church all morning and enforced silence in the afternoon. Maud was pained to discover that Sundays with the Hawthorne sisters followed a similar pattern. In the morning, Victoria read aloud from the New Testament and selected a psalm for Maud to memorize. In the afternoon, the sisters received callers, which meant that Maud was confined to the third floor.
On the Sunday five weeks after her arrival, it rained so hard that no one was likely to call. Maud was allowed to learn her psalm in the back parlor. The sisters sat by the fire. Judith read the newspaper while Victoria refurbished an ancient bonnet.
Maud eyed the bonnet speculatively. It was horribly out of fashion, and she wondered if Victoria could be dissuaded from wearing it. Victoria was not elegant like Hyacinth or distinguished-looking like Judith, but Maud saw no reason why she should look as dowdy as she did.
“Aunt Victoria,” Maud began coaxingly, “wouldn’t it be easier to buy a new hat than to trim that old bonnet?”
Victoria pushed her spectacles higher on her nose, as if by doing so she could come to grips with Maud.
“If you wore a hat instead of a bonnet, you could do your hair in a pompadour,” persisted Maud. “Pompadours are stylish. And a pompadour would make your face look taller.”
Judith snapped the newspaper against her lap. “Maud Flynn! Weren’t you given a psalm to memorize?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Maud said, “but I’m almost finished. I’m up to the part where God breaks the teeth of the ungodly.”
Judith sniffed. The doorbell chimed. The two sisters looked at each other in surprise. Maud sprang up and set the Bible on the parlor table.
“I wonder who’s calling in this rain.” Victoria stuffed the bonnet into her sewing basket. “I’ll get it, Judith.” She caught Maud’s eye and jerked her head toward the back staircase.
Maud darted out on tiptoe. She could hear Victoria speaking and a man’s voice answering. She was halfway up to the third floor when she heard Victoria call her name in a whisper.
“Maud! Come downstairs!”
Maud scurried back down the steps. She found Victoria and Judith arguing in the second-floor corridor.
“— in the front parlor —” Victoria whispered.
“Left him!” Judith sounded furious. “Have you lost your mind, Victoria? Why didn’t you tell him she doesn’t live here?”
“I did. He didn’t believe me,” hissed back Victoria. “I was afraid he’d ask the neighbors —” She kept her finger on her lips, warning Maud to keep silent. Judith took Maud’s arm and pulled her into the nearest bedroom. Victoria followed, shutting the door.
Judith’s fingers dug into Maud’s arm. “Maud Flynn, have you been writing letters?”
“Yes,” gasped Maud. She saw Judith’s eyebrows draw together in a deeper frown. She added hastily, “To Hyacinth. Aunt Victoria said —”
“Not to Hyacinth,” Judith said sternly. “To your brother. Have you got a brother?”
Maud gaped at her. She felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Judith gave her a little shake, and she gasped, “Yes.”
Judith threw up her hands. “Now what shall we do? After all this, to have the child’s brother on our doorstep! It shows the folly of trusting a child —”
“It isn’t her fault,” Victoria said, defending Maud. “We should never have taken her in the