The Hollow Tree by Janet Lunn

Author:Janet Lunn [Lunn, Janet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36746-4
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2001-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

On the Move

Aunt Rachael was more than willing to share the family’s breakfast of beans and corn-meal samp with Jonah and Tibby. Not so Jed and Noah. They were happy enough to have Jonah by their fire but objected loudly — and in unison — that “that little girl should go be with her own mama.” And Anne — Anne walked away and refused to eat breakfast “with the traitor clothed like a squaw.” Phoebe was desolate, not only because Anne despised her but because of how she looked. Anne, who had always managed a bit of lace on her white kerchief, a bit of bright ribbon for her hair, had no kerchief tucked into the neck of her blouse; her gown was dirty and there were tears in it. And Anne’s hair, which had always been freshly washed though she had to help herself to the water heated for the laundry to do it, now hung in limp, dirty hanks, and there was no ribbon.

Phoebe looked towards the carts, where her cousin stood facing away from everyone, her back hunched miserably. In that one moment she couldn’t help but think that Anne despised herself, too. The moment passed, but it left a kinder feeling towards her cousin, a feeling of sympathy she hadn’t been able to manage the night before when Rachael had pleaded for it. She turned back to her aunt and uncle and the boys in a better mood. Uncle Josiah had returned from his morning wash in the brook. He smiled vaguely at Phoebe, but did not seem to recognize her. With a pang of horror, she understood what Aunt Rachael had meant when she’d said Uncle Josiah was “badly shaken” by what had happened. He had retreated into himself, where he could not be reached.

She wanted to comfort him, but she couldn’t think how. What she could do, if she meant to make herself useful, to become someone to be trusted, was look after Tibby and Jonah along with Jed and Noah. She left Bartlett and George with the children and went to see Bertha Anderson. She offered to keep Tibby by her throughout the journey to Fort St. John’s.

“Well, I declare I don’t mind if you do.” The big woman’s face eased into an expression that was almost a smile. “Here, then, you’ll need her duds, such as they are, and I expect I’ll need to give you a bit of vittles so’s the mite can eat. Mind, it’s fer Tibby Thayer. I ain’t supplyin’ the what-fers for that Yardley lad I see you took on. Them Green Mountain folk can look after their own.”

As she talked, Bertha Anderson rummaged among the bundles in her ox cart and came up with a small shawl-wrapped parcel, and a tin bucket into which she put a few handfuls of corn-meal. “There. Now you passel that out good ’n’ careful on accounta it’s all I got to give you. And, if you’re some kind of rebel spy,

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