The Wonder Read Online Free Page B

need of a fresh coat of whitewash; pitched thatch brooded over three small squares of glass. At the far end, a cow byre stooped under the same roof.
    Lib saw all at once the foolishness of her assumptions. If the committee had hired the nurses, then Malachy O’Donnell was not necessarily prosperous. It seemed that all that marked the family out from the other peasants scratching a living around here was their claim that their little girl could live on air.
    She stared at the O’Donnells’ low roofline. If Dr. McBrearty hadn’t been so rash as to write to the
Irish Times,
she saw now, word would never have spread beyond these sodden fields. How many
important
friends of his were investing their hard cash, as well as their names, in this bizarre enterprise? Were they betting that after the fortnight, both nurses would obediently swear to the miracle and make this puny hamlet a marvel of Christendom? Did they think to buy the endorsement, the combined reputability, of a Sister of Mercy and a Nightingale?
    The three walked up the path—right past a dung heap, Lib noticed with a quiver of disapproval. The thick walls of the cabin sloped outwards to the ground. A broken pane in the nearest window was stopped up with a rag. There was a half-door, gaping at the top like a horse’s stall. Mr. Thaddeus pushed the bottom open with a dull scrape and gestured for Lib to go first.
    She stepped into darkness. A woman cried out in a language Lib didn’t know.
    Her eyes started to adjust. A floor of beaten earth under her boots. Two females in the frilled caps that Irishwomen always seemed to wear were clearing away a drying rack that stood before the fire. After piling the clothes into the younger, slighter woman’s arms, the elder ran forward to shake hands with the priest.
    He answered her in the same tongue—Gaelic, it had to be—then moved into English. “Rosaleen O’Donnell, I know you met Sister Michael yesterday.”
    â€œSister, good morning to you.” The woman squeezed the nun’s hands.
    â€œAnd this is Mrs. Wright, one of the famous nurses from the Crimea.”
    â€œMy!” Mrs. O’Donnell had broad, bony shoulders, stone-grey eyes, and a smile holed with dark. “Heaven bless you for coming such a distance, ma’am.”
    Could she really be ignorant enough to think that war still raged in that peninsula and that Lib had just arrived, bloody from the battlefront?
    â€œâ€™Tis in the good room I’d have ye this minute”—Rosaleen O’Donnell nodded towards a door to the right of the fire—“if it wasn’t for the visitors.”
    Now Lib was listening, she could make out the faint sound of singing.
    â€œWe’re grand here,” Mr. Thaddeus assured her.
    â€œLet ye sit down till we have a cup of tea, at least,” Mrs. O’Donnell insisted. “The chairs are all within, so I’ve nothing but creepies for you. Mister’s off digging turf for Séamus O’Lalor.”
    Creepies
had to mean the log stools the woman was shoving practically into the flames for her guests. Lib chose one and tried to inch it farther away from the hearth. But the mother looked offended; clearly, right by the fire was the position of honour. So Lib sat, putting down her bag on the cooler side so her ointments wouldn’t melt into puddles.
    Rosaleen O’Donnell crossed herself as she sat down and so did the priest and the nun. Lib thought of following suit. But no, it would be ridiculous to start aping the locals.
    The singing from the so-called good room seemed to swell. The fireplace opened into both parts of the cabin, Lib realized, so sounds leaked through.
    While the maid winched the hissing kettle off the fire, Mrs. O’Donnell and the priest chatted about yesterday’s drop of rain and how unusually warm the summer was proving on the whole. The nun listened and occasionally murmured assent. Not a word about