“Watch what you're doing, clumsy girl,” Miss Van Woekem snapped. “Now you've quite upset Princess Yasmin.”
I forbore to say that Princess Yasmin had quite upset me as well. The large white Persian sat watching me with a look of utter disdain. I reached carefully past her to get the book. I need not have worried. She turned her back on me and started licking a paw as if I were of no consequence whatever.
At the end of an hour's reading the maid reappeared to announce luncheon.
“I will take mine here, on a tray,” Miss Van Woekem announced. “Miss Murphy will eat at the dining table.” She nodded for me to close the book. “You read surprisingly well for one of your station. The accent is uncouth, of course, but I am pleasingly surprised. Maybe you'll do after aU.”
“And maybe I won't,” I thought as I followed the maid to the dining room. If Daniel thought this was easy work, he had never tried it.
I spent an uneasy meal sitting alone at a vast polished mahogany table, with the maid waiting attendance behind me. I won't say I didn't enjoy it, however. For one who has always had ideas above her station, according to my mother, this was the way I should have been eating all my life. And the food was delicious—some sort of cold fish mousse and salad, fresh fruit and tiny meringues for dessert and freshly made lemonade to drink. I began to think better of the job, especially when I discovered that Miss Van W. took an afternoon nap and I was free to browse in her library.
After tea taken at the little table in the sitting room, she instructed me to get her bath chair ready. The maid brought it into the front hall—an impressive wicker contraption on wheels—and helped Miss Van W. into it.
“You can wheel me around the gardens, girl. It is the most pleasant place to be at this time of day.”
The central square of Gramercy Park was an ironrailed garden filled with trees, shrubs and flowers. I wheeled her across the street to the park's entrance, a wrought-iron gate facing the north side. As I approached, an elderly couple was leaving. The man, with impressive white mustaches, took off his boater, gave a sweeping bow, then held the gate open for us to pass through.
“Good evening, Miss Van Woekem. Seasonably warm again, wouldn't you say?”
Miss Van Woekem nodded to him. “Since it's July, that goes without saying. Good day to you.”
As we passed into the gardens, she muttered to me, “Odious man. Just because he knew McKinley in Ohio, he thinks he can forget that his father was a grocer.”
I pushed her around the park, enjoying the shade under the trees, the sweet-smelling shrubs and the banks of glorious flowers. I noticed a man in a brown suit and derby standing among those trees, blending into the shade as we passed. I wondered if he was a gardener, but he wasn't doing anything and there was no sign of tools. He just stood there, staring up at a house on the south side of the park, and didn't even notice us.
In the distance a clock struck six. “Time to go,” Miss Van Woekem said. “I must change for dinner. My god daughter may be joining me, if she doesn't get a better offer, that is. She is in town for a few days of shopping. You may push me home.”
I wheeled her to the park gate and leaned on it. It remained firmly shut.
“Didn't you bring the key, girl?” she asked in annoyance.
“Key? I didn't know there was a key.” I felt my face flushing.
“Of all the stupidity! Of course there's a key. We don't want to admit riffraff, do we?”
“You might have mentioned it before we set off,” I said.
“You are most insolent and do not know your place.”
“I thought you required a companion, which, by definition, is not a subordinate,” I said. “If I don't suit you, then maybe you should look elsewhere.”
We stared at each other like two dogs whose territories have overlapped.
“I think I'll manage to whip you into shape eventually,” she said with a slight glint that could have been a twinkle in her eyes. “And you had better find a way to get us out of this park before nightfall.”