Rachel Smithson placed the letter on the rough, wooden kitchen table. She was smiling, and glancing at her mother for approval. Her mother, a kind and just woman, though firm, smiled back and nodded. Soon Rachel began to dance around the small kitchen, clutching the letter to her.
"Oh, mother, thank you!" she cried, still dancing about. "I think that I have never been more happy!"
Rachel's younger sister, Alice, also sat at the table, across from her mother, scowling. She did not, however, share her sister's joy. Her family had been poor for as long as she could remember, and she had hoped that Rachel would marry well into a wealthy family.
"A lowly teacher," Alice cried, getting up from her seat. "that is what he is! A poor man, who can provide you with no more than you already have!"
"Silence, Alice!" Mother said. "Your own father was a school teacher, God rest his soul. How can you say such to Rachel? Thomas is a good man!"
Alice quickly stomped away, up the creaking, wooden stairs to the room she shared with her sisters. Emma, her other sister, sat at her desk, her wavy brown hair over the front of her shoulder, writing. Emma was always writing, it seemed. She often wrote poems and short stories and was now working on a novel about Scottish immigrants coming to the United States on an old ship. Emma was not only an accomplished writer, sometimes selling her poems and stories to local newspapers, but she had a heart for people of less fortune. As poor as the Smithson family was, Emma still was so charitable to the homeless who lived in their town of Roadsend, New York.
Emma was probably the least likely to marry, which was why Alice had hoped that Rachel would marry well. Rachel was lovely, charming, and beautiful. Her eyes were a dark, yet bright, blue and her hair was dark brown, long, and curly. She played piano, sewed better than anyone in the house, including Mother, and had the voice of a nightingale. Her features were small, and she was five foot four, shorter than even Alice herself, who was five six. Alice had hoped that some rich, handsome, young man would meet her, marry her, and they would live in a mansion and provide her mother, herself, Emma, and her two brothers with a fine house.
When Alice had walked in, Emma had not heard her, so she quietly sad down on the quilt, which was spread atop their rope bed. Alice gazed around the room. The furnishings were plain, very plain. Emma's desk sat at one wall, to the left of the bed, which was in the middle of the room. To the right of the large bed was a smaller bed, with a lovely quilt embroidered with flowers. This bed was Rachel's. In front of the big bed was a small table with a white glass wash basin on top. Next to it was the simple wooden door which lead to the hallway. The window above Emma and Alice's bed had curtains, white with pink roses on them. The floor was wooden, but very rough. At the foot of the big bed was a hope chest which all the girls shared, for they could not afford for three. And at the right wall, a bit a way from Rachel's bed, was a small dresser, where the girls kept their clothing and other belongings.
The room was cold, for it was January and the only means of warmth besides clothing and bedding was the only fireplace in the house, which was in the front room downstairs, and the black cook stove in the kitchen. Emma, so caught up in her writing, still knew not of Alice's presence in the room. So Alice quietly left, and went down the hall to the room of her two brother's, James and William (Will for short). They were playing with some pieces of wood which they called their "blocks". Their room was small, the only furnishings a bed and a dresser. Though Rachel aided Mother in a small seamstress business which they had in the home, money was scarce and the boy's toys were often pieces of wood and bits of string and yarn. They did have a few small toys which they got as gifts for Christmas and birthdays, but not many at all.
James was the older one, and was twelve years old. His hair was brown, wavy a bit, and his eyes were a blue grey, like Emma's and her own. Will was nine, but looked very much like James, only smaller. They both got along well, and depended on each other immensely.
Their father had died when Will was two, seven years before, in 1841, of the measles. They all had it, except for Will, who was sent away to a neighbor's house to stay away from the sickness in the Smithson house. The house, rough, brown wood on the outside with a roof to match, had been built in 1803 by the parents of Alice's father. He had not yet been born, but had five older siblings who lived in the house right after it was built. It was large enough and the children slept several in a room. But now the house was old, some of the wood rotting, and every winter, it was so bitterly cold inside. Alice hated it most of the time, and wished for a fine, red brick house with a fireplace in every room. But unless by some miracle Emma married a rich man, it seemed very unlikely that she would get her wish anytime soon.
The other upstairs room was her mother's, as sparsely furnished as all the other bedrooms. Her father had inherited the house twenty years before, when Rachel was an infant, after his parents passed away from pneumonia. All of his five older siblings had left New York, many traveled west, and he, the youngest, had been the only one who wanted the house.
Alice sat on one of the wooden steps, propped her arms upon her knees, and thought about the letter. Thomas Black taught at the local public school and had met Rachel at church, Roadsend United Methodist Church, two years before. He was a nice enough man, tall and somewhat good looking. But certainly not someone she wished for her sister to marry. He was twenty-four, four years older than Rachel. And he lived in a boarding house! In his letter of marriage proposal, he had promised Rachel a small house, but still! Oh, this would never do! Alice had to put an end to this nonsense, and decided to figure out a plan on how to do it.