Keeping Secrets by Joan Lowery Nixon

Author:Joan Lowery Nixon [Nixon, Joan Lowery]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-82754-8
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2013-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

10

MA WAS ELATED with Ennie Swenson’s gifts, until Peg blurted out, “Don’t eat the pickles. One of the soldiers in a Union patrol stuck his dirty, grimy hand in them.”

“For goodness sakes, why?” Ma asked. She stared at the jar of pickles as though something awful were about to lift the lid and spring out.

Miss Hennessey chuckled indulgently. “He was a very young, overly conscientious corporal, who was probably looking for something sinister like smuggled-out lists of troop dispatchments. Would you believe his soldiers actually searched the buggy?”

Ma was about to speak, but Miss Hennessey quickly said, “But I’m grateful for the patrols on the road. We met up with one going and another one coming. Thanks to the presence of our Union soldiers I felt perfectly safe.”

“Yes,” Ma said, but she didn’t look entirely convinced. The kettle began steaming, so Ma took it from the fire and filled the teapot.

Miss Hennessey pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. Elbows on the table, she rested her chin in her hands as she said, “The sergeant of the first patrol was an unlettered man. I could tell he was going to follow every rule in the book, down to the smallest detail. The way he frowned as he read General Bassett’s letter of safe passage, then studied Peg, alerted me to the fact that he was going to demand a similar letter for Peg.”

She reached for the cup of tea Ma handed her and sighed. “All I could think was that we’d be turned back, and after all this time I wouldn’t see my sister Nellie. I was frantic!” She leaned toward Ma. “What would you have done, Noreen?”

“Well,” Ma said, taken by surprise. “I—I suppose I would have tried to explain, and—”

“An explanation wouldn’t have meant anything to a man like that. If it weren’t listed in the rules he’d memorized, he wouldn’t have known what to do with it.”

Again, Miss Hennessey paused and waited for Ma to speak.

Flustered, Ma began, “Then I might have … uh …”

“I’m sure you would have done what I did,” Miss Hennessey said. “I told the sergeant that Peg was my daughter. That satisfied him, and we were allowed to proceed.”

“I suppose in a case like that—”

Miss Hennessey interrupted, a broad smile on her face. “Oh, Noreen, how I wish I really did have a daughter like Peg. She’s such a dear, lovely young woman and a pleasant traveling companion.”

Peg blushed, but didn’t speak. She was too busy thinking over what Miss Hennessey had told Ma about misleading the soldiers into thinking that Peg was Miss Hennessey’s daughter. She’d kept her promise to tell, in her own way, just as she’d said she would, so Peg couldn’t complain; but her own way was just a tad different from the way Peg would have told Ma. At least Miss Hennessey’s deception got her past the patrol and to Danny, so did the way the story was told really matter?

Miss Hennessey pushed back her chair and got to her feet.

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