Mail Order Annie
Copyright© 2025 by DFL Runner
Chapter 3
He frequently sought Mr. Tanner’s counsel on matters concerning Ella, and when the man told him the time was right, his mentor fashioned him a fine new shirt and waistcoat to wear to Kenneth Burke’s home to ask for Ella’s hand in marriage. Kenneth was bemused, having expected the request since shortly after Harry asked permission to court Ella, but he nonetheless granted his blessing to this young man who he had come to respect and who made his daughter so happy.
Harold Ormsbee Crane and Elspeth Ruth Burke were married at noon on Friday, November 26, 1869. The kindly Parson Sterling officiated the ceremony, which was witnessed by Ella’s parents, by Harry’s surrogate father, and numerous well-wishers, from employees of her father’s factory to regular patrons of Martin’s tailor shop. His mother and stepfather, Harry absently noted, never made an appearance. Nor had his older sister, Deborah, although he knew that as the arrival of her third child was imminent.
The couple retired to Harry’s home. Harry had been openly embarrassed by the prospect that his new wife would go from her father’s well-appointed home to his two-room log cabin, but Kenneth had reassured him. “My daughter is well cared for, but she has never been spoiled. So many other men of means raise daughters who are insufferable, knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Your house will be her castle, because it will be a home you both build together.”
Ella prepared their first meal as husband and wife, roasting a small portion of venison over the fire. To Harry, it was the most sumptuous meal he had ever consumed. As he paused to reflect on the joy the day had brought him, he saw Ella retire to the other room, which served as his bedroom, out of the corner of his eye. A few minutes later, he heard her call to him from the bedroom and he casually strolled into the other room.
He stood stock-still as he saw her, standing by his bed. Their bed now, he mentally corrected himself. He absorbed the sight of her standing there in the twilight shadows, clad only in a housecoat.
Then he heard her soft voice. “Good evening, my husband.”
Then she undid the two buttons holding the housecoat closed and slid it off her body.
Ella waited a few moments for Harry to respond, but his brain seemed to have stopped working, and he was frozen to the spot. Growing the slightest bit impatient, she moved away from the bed and toward him. Standing before him, she bent slightly and unbuttoned his trousers, pulling them down.
When she took him in her hand, his brain became a little more present.
Chuckling, she said, “Sarah didn’t warn me that you would be rooted to the spot. If anything, she warned me I might have to fight you off.”
It faintly registered in Harry’s brain that Sarah was Ella’s older sister, but he still looked at her in confusion.
“You didn’t know? I thought every man in this town knew about Sarah.”
“I know she’s your sister.”
“Ah. Well. Sarah ... well, Sarah helped several boys in this town become men.”
Harry heard her words but, his mind being focused on where his wife’s hand was, didn’t quite register them.
“Everything I know to do tonight, Sarah taught me.”
With that, she knelt before Harry, kissed his manhood, and began to stroke it. She only had to stroke it a few times before she heard her husband’s breath quicken before, with a gasp, his issue covered her bare breasts.
Harry snapped back to attention as his bride dipped a finger into the liquid on her chest and tasted it, before retrieving the housecoat off the floor and using it to clean the rest. Much later, Harry would reflect on this moment and chuckle at her attempt to cast a lustful and seductive glance at him while still being innocent enough to blush deeply while biting her lip to keep from giggling. But in the moment, Harry was too preoccupied with his own mixture of lust and naïveté to notice hers.
She stood up to her full height and unbuttoned Harry’s shirt, sliding it off him and leaving him as naked as she was. She then wrapped her arms around him and spoke to him not as a young and innocent girl, but as a woman seeking to meet her body’s need. And he was what her body needed. “The parson told us that the two shall be as one. Come to bed with me, my husband.”
It was a night Harry would never forget. Sarah had apparently taught her sister quite a bit, and taught it to her well. They both wore each other out after the fourth practical application of those lessons, only to awaken in the middle of the night to attempt two more.
Theirs was an idyllic life over the months to come. They would bundle up, often nude, under the covers – just to conserve body heat, of course, but they often found other ways to raise the temperature. The few times that a winter storm prevented his passage into town to open up the tailor shop, Ella would find some new and scandalous thing that Sarah had taught her to try, although she acknowledged she would need to wait for warmer weather to try cavorting about the home completely naked all day for him.
One early-Spring Sunday afternoon, the young couple walked past a handful of farms dotting the path between the church and their home. Ella looked wistfully at the signs of new life that come to farms every spring. She leaned backward into Harry’s arms and wistfully said, “One day, love. One day we will be part of this too.” They had been trying for a baby since their wedding night, but despite multiple attempts – sometimes even multiple attempts a night – her monthly courses had arrived the prior week.
And then came the early summer day when Mr. Tanner had not felt well, so he left shortly after opening the shop for the day, leaving Harry to run the shop by himself. Harry worked himself to the bone that day to meet several deadlines that Mr. Tanner had promised his clients, expecting to have two people to share the load. One or two even came and assured him that they were willing to wait a day or two. Mr. Tanner would never have heard of such a thing, and Harry wouldn’t either. Like his mentor, Harry vowed to be a man of his word, whatever the cost. He therefore happily put in as much time as was needed to finish the jobs, and to finish them well.
Harry nearly collapsed at the doorway of his own home, having barely found the strength to walk there from town. Ella met him at the door and guided him to his chair in the main room, breaking her own rule and bringing him a dinner plate to eat there instead of at their table.
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