Someone to watch over me

should tell him what she’d heard.

Chapter 14

    Tuesday morning, Mrs. Prinney asked Lily, “Do you know how to drive the Duesenberg?“
    “I know how to drive, but I’ve never driven the Duesie. Robert would have a fit if I tried to put my hand to the wheel.“
    “Is he busy today?“
    “I don’t think so. Why?“
    “I want to go upriver a ways. I read last night in one of the gardening books that perennials should be planted in the fall so they have plenty of time over the winter to get rooted and set their blooms. I’ve heard several of the mansions up north have beautiful gardens. People go miles and miles to see them. And some of the places sell their extra plants to help pay the gardeners for keeping the garden going.“
    “But it’s not fall yet. It’s only the end of July.”
    “Still, I’d like to look over what I will want.”
    “I’ll put it to Robert under one condition,“ Lily said. “Tell me what perennials are without laughing at me.“
    “I thought you knew, dear. They’re plants that come back by themselves every year. You don’t have to grow them from seeds unless you want to. And most of them, my books say, grow well enough to divide with a shovel and have more and more over the years.”
    Lily lifted an eyebrow. “You’re thinking of making Grace and Favor into one of those garden showplaces, aren’t you?“
    “Why ever would you say that,“ Mrs. Prinney said, gasping and blushing scarlet.
    Lily smiled. “I’ll ask Robert to drive us.”
    She ran into Mimi, their one maid, dusting the furniture in the entry hall. She had her excessively blond hair tied up in a red polka-dot scarf and was sweating copiously as she crawled under furniture to make sure she hadn’t missed a single speck. She still looked glamorous.
    Lily bent down. “Have you any idea where Robert is?“
    “Yes, miss. He’s in the library playing solitaire,“ Mimi replied, getting to her feet.
    “Mrs. Prinney wants him to drive us to see some flower gardens,“ Lily explained.
    Mimi clasped her duster to her bosom. “Oh, miss! I love flower gardens.“
    “Would you like to come along?”
    Mimi frowned. “I’ve got the dusting to do. I always do the whole place on Tuesdays.“
    “Dusting can wait. It won’t get any worse by tomorrow.“
    “I’d like to go ever so much,“ Mimi admitted. “May I put on clean clothes? I’ll really hurry.“ Lily was starting to think maybe Mrs. Prinney was right. In these hard times, people liked things that were beautiful or simply fun to do. Women especially liked to be pretty and have pretty things around them. Lily herself had put herself to sleep the night before thinking about her mother’s various homes, awash in bowls and vases of colorful scented flowers, and wishing to be surrounded with them again. They would remind her of her mother.
    The trip was soon arranged. Robert was at his wits’ end with boredom. He wasn’t allowed to finish tearing down the old icehouse until Walker said he could. He’d been unable to reach the pathologist in Albany. And any excuse to swan around in the Duesie appealed to him.
    Lily sat in front with Robert. In the back, Mrs. Prinney gabbled to Mimi as they went along about plumbago, irises, dead nettle (which alarmed Robert), phlox, spirea bushes, larkspur, eucalyptus, peonies, roses, gladiolus, ferns, and chrysanthemums.

    Tuesday seemed to Jack Summer to be the hottest, smelliest day he could ever remember experiencing. As the temperature climbed, the odors of the camp became more horrific, the flies more frantic, the children crankier, the men more sullen, the women more downtrodden and tending to weep at the slightest thing. He watched helplessly as a broken coffee cup reduced one old woman to complete hysteria.
    “General“ Walter Waters visited the camp later in the morning, making angry speeches. “Are you men or dogs? Will you cringe and yelp while your masters beat you?“ Anyone looking as if they were packing up to go home was open to attack. He struck one man who was loading a wagon. “You’re an enemy to the men who lost their lives in the Great War! A coward! Scum of the earth!“ he shouted.
    The man’s little boy pushed at him. “Don’t you talk ugly to my daddy!”
    Waters shoved the child, and he fell down in a heap of horse manure. The mother of the child had to be restrained from going after Waters with a kitchen knife. Waters’s khaki-clad bodyguards tried to haul her away to God knows