The Pastor's Replacement Bride
Copyright© 2023 by George H. McVey
Chapter 21
Hattie
Everything was going great, Hattie thought, as she climbed out of bed on Wednesday. She’d been here in Sanctuary for a week. She’d came for no other reason than to escape from Papa John and being forced to work between the sheets, and now she was engaged to Pastor Joshua Bryce.
She looked at the ring he’d placed on her finger in front of the entire congregation on Sunday. When he’d started his sermon and she realized what he was saying, she had been so worried that the people of Sanctuary would think that somehow she had led their pastor into temptation. But after the words praising her that Deacon Lyman had used while setting his daughter straight, she knew God had indeed brought her home.
She glanced at the infant sleeping in the cradle beside her bed. He’d brought her home and had given her a family, even if only temporarily. She looked down at RoseAnn and once again asked God, like she had done every day since Joshua placed the little girl in her arms, for a miracle. That somehow, she would be Hattie’s for real.
She took this time, while the baby was still asleep, to work on her wedding dress.
Lyla had offered to sew it together for her, but Hattie wanted to do it herself.
She had found out the other brides were putting together a trousseau for her and she’d been told not to stop them, because they were her family now. So, she’d agreed, as long as they agreed to leave her alone to do her own dress.
When Joshua learned she wanted to continue to work with Lyla and design new dresses for his uncle to sell, he’d told Jethro to order not one, but two, of Singer’s new sewing machines. When she’d complained that she didn’t need one, let alone two, he informed her that one was for her and the other was for Lyla, since she was helping her. Then he’d told her that, while he knew she could make the dresses without the machine, he needed her to be able to help him with visitations and the Ladies Aid Society. So, she’d accepted.
The other big surprise for her was how right Helen had been. The parsonage, while clean, had lacked just about everything one would need to set up housekeeping. As a result, she, Aunt Caroline, and Helen had spent most of Sunday evening pouring over the catalogs for the things she would need.
When Hattie had exclaimed over how much everything was going to cost, Joshua had finally told her he was the one who’d filled her account with money. He had then taken her, his Aunt, and cousin into his office and showed them the drawer with the false bottom. When he’d opened the first bag in the bottom of the desk and poured out his contents, they’d all three gasped.
“Joshua, are all of those bags filled with gold?” Aunt Caroline asked in a whisper.
Joshua smiled, “Yes Aunty, they are. Nugget Nate gave them to me the last time we met.”
“Bring that all over to the store right now.” Caroline then looked at her daughter “Helen, get the scales set up. We need to calculate how much this is.”
Joshua and Hattie started putting the bags of gold in a sack for Joshua to carry over to the store, to figure out just how much money there was. Then they’d gone up to the living quarters, where they found Jethro splayed out on the divan with little RoseAnn asleep on his chest. There was a puddle of drool darkening his shirt.
Caroline poked Helen and pointed. “That’s how I used to find you quite often as a baby. Your papa would sneak into the room when you were crying and get you out of your crib. Then he’d climb in bed, or on the divan like here, and talk to you till you’d fall asleep, and usually he’d fall asleep too. Good to see he hasn’t lost his touch.”
Just then they heard the shopkeeper. “I’m not asleep, woman. I’m just resting my eyes. They get a bit cross-eyed looking at a little one up close like this.”
“Well, put her in the bassinet. We’re going downstairs to figure out how big a fortune your nephew was hiding in a desk drawer.”
“I ain’t putting no more on that account. She couldn’t spend it all now even if she buys everything in the homemaker’s catalog for the parsonage.”
“Just come down and weigh it all up, please, there are six good sized bags for it.”
They went downstairs and spent the next hour weighing gold nuggets. The smallest of them weighed out at around two thousand dollars. The biggest ten thousand. There were at least a dozen nuggets per bag. They divided them until they had two bags of the smaller nuggets, each bag worth twenty-four-thousand dollars. There were two bags with the largest weight, and they figured those bags to be worth a hundred-twenty-four-thousand dollars each. And two bags with slightly smaller nuggets, the total of those bags around seventy-five-thousand dollars each. All told, Nugget Nate had made Joshua quite wealthy, giving him close to half-a-million dollars total.
“What in the world are you going to do with that much money, Joshua?”
“I’m going to put it back in the drawer and wait for what God tells me to use it for. That’s why Nate gave it to me. I’ve already used some of it on getting the two Hattie’s here and on making sure the brides all got berthed in the same sleeper car on the way here. We don’t need the money; I’m happy with what I make here and the little I saved up from being in the Rangers.
“However, Hattie has informed me that my thin narrow cot is not suitable for a marriage bed. Plus, the need for some furniture Elias can make, and some you can order. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and deposit three of the smaller nuggets. The rest goes back in the drawer till God shows me what to use it for.”
Hattie blushed, remembering that he’d insisted she go to the bank with him and to Mr. Charles’s furniture shop the previous day. The bed was an easy purchase. Mr. Charles had been building several since he’d first heard about the mail-order brides coming. He already had a large four-poster bed finished and ready to sell, complete with an overstuffed feather mattress he’d traveled to Billings to buy. He promised to deliver it to the parsonage the week of their wedding and set it up.
They had ordered a dressing table with a mirror, a wardrobe for Hattie, and the furniture for the nursery. The order had thrilled the furniture maker. He showed Hattie a plank of wood that he’d been carving figures into. It had seven short little funny looking men, with some caricature animals in between them. He asked if he could use that panel on the back of the dresser with the changing top he’d make for RoseAnn. Hattie loved the idea and told him how cute the carvings were.
Mr. Charles had beamed like she’d told him he was the most handsome man in all the land. Joshua sort of beamed himself and agreed with the woodworker that Hattie was a special lady. Which, of course, had made her blush.
A knock on her parlor door interrupted her thoughts. It was still early, and the only person usually up this time of day was Helen. Hattie pulled on her robe and went to the door to see who it was. She was only slightly surprised to see a red eyed and crying Lyla. “Lyla, come in and tell me what’s wrong.”
“Oh Hattie, it’s those brothers.”
Hattie sighed, “Yes, I was worried about that when I saw you sitting between them Sunday. I thought you agreed to discourage Greg.”
“I tried, Hattie. Did you know that Glenn never actually came to ask if he could press his suit to court me?”
“He didn’t? But I thought Helen said every bride had been approached on Friday.”
“He sent Greg to ask me. But Greg didn’t tell me that at first. Instead, he asked if I’d allow him to call on me and I told him no. I explained I came here to allow Glenn to court me. That’s when he told me that Glenn had asked him to ask me if he could walk me to church Sunday and then have me out to the farm for supper and to see the place.”
“I asked him why Glenn didn’t come and ask me himself. He said he’d asked him that, too, but his brother said he didn’t know how to talk to a girl like me and was afraid he’d mess it up. So I thought that was kinda cute and told Greg to tell Glenn I would love to walk to church with him and have supper at the farm.”
“When Glenn came to get me Sunday to walk to church, all he said was ‘Are you ready to go?’ I told him I was, and he turned and walked out the door. I hurried to catch up to him and put my hand around his arm, and we walked to church silently.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“No, not a word, and he was walking so fast I couldn’t say anything. It was all I could do to keep up with him.