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  Moss Farm

  Praise for:

  Cordelia Underwood,

  Or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

  (A New York Times Notable Book)

  “An amiable, richly populated first novel. . . . Diffuse and leisurely, the novel seems designed for long afternoons in a hammock. . . . Reid’s gazillion characters sparkle.”—The New York Times Book Review

  “An affectionate homage to Charles Dickens’s masterpiece by the first-time novelist Van Reid . . . [with] adventures and misadventures galore. If the next installment resembles this amiable Dickensian romp then it will prove, to quote Mr. Pickwick himself, ‘delightful—thoroughly delightful!’”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “A decidedly entertaining read. . . . This Maine native writes with such authenticity about the turn of the last century one wonders if he’s not a time-traveler. . . . Ultimately, how the pieces fit together doesn’t much matter because the pieces themselves are so funny and so crisply written and so Maine. . . . Old-fashioned, rollicking good fun.”—Concord Sunday Monitor

  “A delightful first novel. . . . Almost everything about Reid’s novel is right—from opening page to the tantalizing conclusion. . . . Reid’s window on the past century is a welcome addition to the literary landscape as we stumble forward into the twenty-first.” —Bangor Daily News

  “Get yourself a copy of Cordelia Underwood, pull down the shades, unplug the computer, and return, as they say, to those glorious days of yesteryear—whether they existed or not. You won’t find a more enjoyable book this year. I personally guarantee it.”—Portfolio magazine

  “Hilarious. . . . An entertaining romp through part of New England at the dawn of the Twentieth-century . . . [that] captures the innocence and sense of adventure characteristic of turn-of-the-century America. . . . Van Reid’s love of New England lore and his ability to incorporate historic sites and facts into an imaginative confection leave the reader eager for the next installments.”—Publishers Weekly

  Mollie Peer,

  Or the Underground Adventures of the Moosepath League

  “This is old-fashioned storytelling at its finest.”—The A List

  “A wonderful successor to Reid’s Cordelia Underwood . . . sparkles with neo-Dickensian comedy, romance and melodrama.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “[Reid] extracts humor from nearly every detail, writing with a gleeful vigor, evoking—nay, escaping to—a time when men trembled at the sight of a lovely woman, baseball and newspapers had just begun to flourish, and adventures seemed to await all comers at every boarding-house, tavern, railway station and wharf.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “It is the suspense of what the plot has in store, combined with the well-written and humorous buffoonery of the Moosepath League and their antics that keeps the reader turning pages.”—The Times Record

  Daniel Plainway,

  Or the Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League

  “Addictive. . . . what makes Reid’s novels so enjoyable is that they seamlessly combine a time and place . . . with characters whose innocent appreciation of the world turns conventional thinking on its head.”—The Washington Post

  With “comic characters so vivid and heartwarming you wish their crazily entangled stories would never end.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

  With all the twists of plot and detailed (if fanciful) early American history, Daniel Plainway is rich but never too dense, reminiscent of Umberto Eco without so many philosophical underpinnings. But Reid does have ideas of his own, beyond the lionization of decent men. Much of the novel is dedicated to the digressive telling of stories, and most of those stories feature recurring themes having to do with the chain of coincidences created by acts of kindness and gross misjudgment of another’s character. . . . [T]he assured thematic purpose and the elegance of Reid’s prose lend his work a satisfying maturity. It’s like a children’s book for adults.—The Onion

  And More Praise for The Moosepath Saga

  “Reid has an excellent sense of dramatic situation . . . shrewd characters . . . suspense. Writing with power, restraint, and light comic touch, he keeps a surprise till the last.”—Booklist (starred review).

  “Hopeful . . . a gentle and engaging reminder that America is more than a nation of individuals; it is also a nation of ideas.”—Bangor Daily News

  Reid returns with the fourth rousing installment in his series. . . . His solid readership should grow with this sterling effort.—Publisher’s Weekly

  The most imaginative and outrageous in the series thus far. It would be a crime and a sin, and just plain un-neighborly, to miss it.—Kirkus Reviews

  As Jared McCannon, a passing character, acknowledges, “He had met the Moosepath League in the summer of the previous year but had perhaps wondered, in the meantime, if he had imagined it.” He didn’t. But Van Reid did. And for that readers can be grateful.—Maine Sunday Telegram

  Moss Farm

  or the Mysterious Missives of the Moosepath League

  (September 24–October 1, 1896)

  Van Reid

  Camden, Maine

  Published by Down East Books

  An imprint of Globe Pequot

  Trade Division of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2016 by Van Reid

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  ISBN 978-1-60893-528-4 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-60893-529-1 (e-book)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Friends of the Moosepath League

  Contents

  Contents

  A Premise

  Book One: September 24–25, 1896

  1: A House on Dyer Street

  2: How Did the Indian Summer?

  3: Musing to Musing

  4: Certain Proposals

  5: Ephram Obscura

  Book Two: September 26, 1896

  6: Trade Secrets

  7: Not Their Strong Suit

  8: Moss Farm

  9: Return to Sender

  10: The Family Moss

  11: Attending Mrs. Mint

  12: Evening at Moss Farm

  13: A Certain Tendency Grows Less General

  14: The Indian Bridge

  Book Three: September 27, 1896

  15: Thunderhead on Atlantic

  16: The Honor of Kings

  17: The Accomplishing Tale

  18: Briefly Conferring in Saco

  Book Four: September 28, 1896

  19: Briefly Waking in Edgecomb

  20: Friends in High Places

  21: A Social Snowball

  22: Late in Bloom

  23: Diverse Pursuits

  24: Herbert Blunt’s Barn

  25: Mum’s the Word br />
  26: Hard to Picture

  27: The Battle from On Far

  28: Some Words with the Parson

  Book Five: September 29–30, 1896

  29: The Note on the Door

  30: Contrite Laughter

  31: How to Write a Soothing Note

  32: Cool Heads and Clear Water

  33: A Club Newsletter

  34: More Than Stolen Notions

  Epilogue: Cabal at the Crooked Cat

  Author’s Note

  A Note on Chronology

  Although this narrative has been published after Fiddler’s Green, the events herein take place between those of Cordelia Underwood and Mollie Peer. The management apologizes for any temporal perturbations.

  A Premise

  (August, 1859)

  “AUNT Flora?”

  “Yes, Toby?” Flora heard her nephew come into the kitchen. She had just taken the tea kettle from the stove and was pouring hot water into the stoppered sink. With a flick of her wrist she knocked the cake of soap in its little wire basket in with the dishes, gave the water a few swishes to encourage some suds and wiped her wet hand on her apron as she turned.

  His small, round face was looking down at a folded piece of writing paper with an expression wavering between the bemused and the amused. Flora recognized the paper from her own desk and even across the room she knew her own handwriting.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “My mother said to bring this letter to you,” he said, “and find out what you wrote, here.” He walked toward her but she met him halfway, reaching with one hand for the letter and affectionately frisking his hair with the other. She did not entirely let him go as she raised the paper in the light from the kitchen windows and glanced at the date on the letter’s first page: June 28, 1859.

  He leaned his curly brown head toward her and pointed to the passage in question.

  The paper was what might be termed “well used”; in the common (and conservative) fashion of the day, she had filled a page with thoughts and news, then turned the paper ninety degrees and filled it again. It was an old trick that used less paper; the human eye had a remarkable ability (especially with practice) to untangle the two layers of writing, though occasionally the confluence of certain sweeps and loops at separate angles made it a challenge to know to which word which elements belonged.

  Flora laughed lightly. In this case, the very accuracy and beauty of her handwriting (in which she took deserved pride) had helped to confuse matters for half a line running in one direction. “Oh, my!” she said. “That is a muddle.” She turned the letter on its side to consider the opposing line, then righted it again. “What did your mother think?” she asked.

  “That they had lasted for years.”

  “Those would have been formidable peaches!”

  “She said you must have canned them.”

  “Ah! And your father?”

  “That you were,” Toby pointed to the mysterious figures, “chased by bears.”

  “Was I?”

  “I don’t think he believed it. He kept insisting till Mom laughed so hard she cried. She said you wouldn’t put up with such nonsense.”

  Flora laughed herself, thinking of being chased by bears but mostly thinking of her brother-in-law insisting with a straight face that it was so. “And what did you think, Lizzie?” she asked of Toby’s sister who was standing at the threshold to the hall, smiling at Flora’s humor.

  “I thought you were chastened by tears,” said young Elizabeth.

  “Oh, my! Those peaches are growing stronger by the minute.” Flora was laughing quite delightedly, now. The children’s father said it was the Irish in them that made his wife and sister-in-law Flora laugh so. His own humor was what some might typify in a Scot—straight-faced and dry—but he loved most to employ it in instigating the lovely music of his wife’s own laughter. Sometimes, when Josephine laughed at his pretended gravity (which he always displayed with large innocence), he would weaken slightly with a small smile and turn his head.

  Elizabeth generally took after their father in this respect, and Toby their mother and aunt, but both children could hear their mother in Flora’s laughter and they smiled broadly—those smiles drawing their features into similarity.

  “It is a little unclear,” their aunt admitted. “I think the cat may have jumped up on the desk just then, which didn’t help. And what did you think?” she asked Toby.

  “That the peaches were cased in pairs. I thought that was the dot for the ‘i’,” he added, pointing again.

  “Well, that’s getting nearer the mark,” said Aunt Flora. She left the letter that she had written to her sister some weeks ago with Toby and returned to the sink.

  Elizabeth had come into the kitchen and was looking over her brother’s shoulder. They were like two pieces of the same puzzle, thought Flora, but from different ends—Toby as jolly as a dog with two tails, Lizzie quietly beatific in her tranquility and poise. Flora knew no happier time of year than summers when her sister’s children came to stay with her and her husband on their Oak Hill farm in Richville, even if things seemed a little quieter this year with Toby and Lizzie’s older brother having gone to sea.

  “I suppose you spent more time on those three words than you did all the rest of the letter,” she said as she snatched the cake of soap in its wire basket from the steaming water. “Draw me some more water, will you Toby?” she asked, and he set the tin bucket beneath the pump spout and began to work the handle while Aunt Flora gathered some more of the cooking utensils and dropped them after the silverware in the sink.

  Elizabeth was considering the letter where Toby had laid it on the kitchen table. “But what did you write?” she asked.

  Flora stopped at the table to look over Lizzie’s shoulder. She reached past her niece and pointed out the baffling words. “—purchased the pears,” she read aloud.

  “Pears?” shouted Toby with a grin.

  Lizzie leaned closer to the letter with a kind of comic frown. “You just said there were peaches,” she said. “There’s no mention of pears.”

  “Isn’t there?” Flora came back and looked again. “You’re right, there isn’t!” She laughed again. “Who would have thought that a box of pears could raise so much question?”

  “We did!” said Toby happily. “We did look at it longer than the rest of the letter!”

  “Maybe we should tell them you were chased by bears,” said Lizzie, with her father’s somber-appearing humor. Purchasing pears did seem a step down.

  “I suppose it’s true,” said Flora, looking out the window above the sink at a robin in the back yard.

  “That you were chased by bears?” said Toby as he poured cool water from the bucket into the steaming dishwater.

  “No,” said his aunt. “That people will consider something mysterious or unclear much longer than they will what is plain and readily understood—or what seems to be.”

  Toby thought about this. He turned to his sister and was struck by the expression on her face, which seemed to indicate (in the quietest manner possible) a sudden inspiration. “I think I’ll write a letter home tonight,” she announced, and she left the kitchen as one in deep thought.

  Flora began washing dishes, smiling quietly. She looked down at Toby, who was himself smiling at nothing in particular. “Your parents will be thinking Lizzie’s been chased by pears and weeping, chastened bears, I suppose.” She raised a dish out of the water and set it in the drainer. “But the letter will last long in the reading.”

  The light of understanding dawned upon Toby’s face and Flora laughed. “You’d better catch her up,” she said and the young boy ran out of the kitchen and bustled after his sister.

  Book One: September 24–25, 1896

  1

  A House on Dyer Street

&n
bsp; Actonia’s sister-in-law (her brother’s wife) was calling down the hall. “Matilda?” and there would be a wait of several seconds. After this silence, the name “Matilda!” would again carry through half the house without reply. Then Constance would start again with the questioning version. “Matilda?” When this cycle had played itself out half a dozen times, with no hint of stopping, Actonia thought Constance would be well advised to shift her base of operations.

  And they think I’m the dotty one, thought Actonia.

  She excused herself, went to her door, and opened it just a little before calling down the hall, “I think she must be in another part of the house, Constance!” with a little more annoyance in her voice than she had intended to reveal.

  “What are you wearing, Actonia?” said Constance, who surprised Actonia by appearing almost immediately by the door. The older woman hadn’t realized that her brother’s wife had come down the hall.

  “Why clothes, Constance,” said Actonia with a small smile. She’d been a willow all her life and her features had an elfin quality that either charmed or nettled a person. “How about you?” she retaliated. She was the older sister-in-law, Constance the younger wife, but there weren’t so many years between them. Why did Actonia always feel elderly and desiccated when Constance was at hand?

  “But it’s—coral, Actonia!” said Constance with obvious distaste. She had hold of the door and forced it further open.

  “I suppose it is.”

  “But it’s a young lady’s color, dear,” said Constance.

  “I’m not young, it’s true,” admitted Actonia. She was well past the half-century mark but didn’t like to calculate it any finer than that. “But I don’t feel old. At least I didn’t when I got up. I know I’m not a young woman. I took the bows and most of the lace from it.”

  “But Jack!” said Constance.

  “Yes, Jack, God bless him, was the one who died—more’s the pity—not me. It’s been three years and more. You wouldn’t have me buried with him, would you?”