Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's by Fiona McHugh

Author:Fiona McHugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: road to avonlea, fiona mchugh, mchugh
Publisher: Davenport Press

Chapter Eleven

Horror smote Rachel Lynde’s heart as she gazed around Mr. Abraham’s kitchen. If a family of pigs had set up home in it for a month, the place would probably, she thought, have looked tidier.

The floor was so layered with dirt that one’s feet stuck to it. The grimy, fly-spotted windows blocked out all light. A wheelbarrow, loaded to the brim with dirty dishes, slumped in one corner, its wheel missing. Books and saucepans competed for space on the counter. Some of the saucepans, she noted with a shudder, seemed to have sprouted vegetation! On the table stood a broken chair, piled high with old newspapers. Farm implements lay scattered everywhere. Rachel wondered whether kitchen utensils littered the barn in the same way.

With all her heart, she ached to fall upon that filth-encrusted room and scour it till it shone. Only the knowledge that she was wearing her second-best visiting suit and her new silk shirtwaist held her back.

“Mathilda Abraham would turn in her grave if she could see this!” she moaned.

She had taken several unwary paces into the kitchen in her first flush of consternation, and now one of her shoes seemed to be permanently glued to the floor.

At the mention of his sister’s name, Alexander Abraham looked at Mrs. Lynde properly for the first time. She could not but notice that his eyes were a piercing blue.

“I don’t believe I quite caught your name, woman,” he said.

“My name, sir, is Mrs. Thomas Lynde.”

A light seemed to break over Mr. Abraham’s countenance.

“Ahh,” he exclaimed. “So you’re that meddlesome do-gooder forever collecting money for the foreign missions. Tell me, have you managed to save all the heathens of the world yet?”

Rachel’s glance was so sharp it could have sliced him clean in half.

“As far as I can see,” she replied scathingly, “there are still one or two left.”

“If you ask me,” snorted Mr. Abraham, “there are more heathens amongst those old women gossips in Avonlea than anywhere else in the world!”

Rachel refused to rise to his bait. Sara and Felix had followed them into the kitchen, and she did not wish to lose her temper in front of them.

“I need a nice cup of tea,” she decided. “Show me where you keep your teapot and I’ll make it myself.”

“You needn’t mind,” he answered, somewhat testily. “I’ve been in the habit of making my own tea for twenty years now.”

“I daresay. But you haven’t been in the habit of making mine. I wouldn’t eat anything you cooked. Death by slow starvation would be better!”

Alexander Abraham shuffled over to a shadowy corner, muttering under his breath. He pulled open a cupboard door.

“Have your tea, then, woman!” he growled. “I’ll have my own brand of comfort!”

Sara and Felix gazed at him, their eyes wide with wonder. In his hand he held a dusty bottle, filled with a liquid that, even a child could tell, bore no resemblance to water. He raised the bottle and jerked the cork out with his teeth.

A gasp of outrage escaped Rachel.

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