Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott

Author:Ursula Parrott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McNally Editions
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Nellie had found a way of changing the subject again.

“Patricia, I wish you could advise me. I’ve done something I think is very wicked.”

She had never done anything more wicked in her life than beg a prescription from father, for wine to use in making sauce madère.

“What is it, Nellie?”

“I’ve taken out naturalization papers.”

I did not see why that was wicked, but I thought it surprising; because father had tried for years to get her to become an American citizen, since she had lived in the United States most of her life, and had bought property here with her savings. She had always refused. “Forswear my allegiance to the crown my brother died for?” (that was just about her phrase) “never!”

“How did you happen to do that, Nellie?”

She reached for a box, that held money, a rosary, a prayer book, and snapshots of her nieces in Canada. She extracted after some search, a newspaper picture of Al Smith, coming out of a Cathedral after his daughter’s wedding. She showed it to me.

“There,” she said, “doesn’t he look like a good pious father and husband? The doctor says he’ll be running for President next year, and I got naturalized so I can vote for him! He looks like an honest Christian, and I thought I should.”

She sighed a little. “I do feel dreadful though, because it’s as if I were throwing my allegiance in the face of my brother and that friend of his, in the picture over there. It makes them seem away off somewhere. That I should live long enough to give up my allegiance to the crown—Do you know, Patricia, if it had been in the Old Queen’s lifetime I could never have done it.”

“Nellie, Nellie,” I said, “the story should be captioned ‘Queen Victoria’s Death Gains Al Smith One Vote.’ ”

She did not understand me, but she smiled. “Now don’t you be making fun of me, child; it was a great difficulty I had, deciding. You go to bed, and rest, and I’ll send that Little Nellie up with your breakfast in the morning.”

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