"Well, Miss Mudd, I thank for letting me know about my sons," Rebecca leaned forward a little and said in a sotto voce tone, "They can be very secretive at times."

“Not surprised!” shrugged Arabella.

She looked at Bridget and gave her a warm smile, "It's a pleasure to meet you Miss Monahan." 

Bridget smiled back, vaguely wondered what they were doing here exactly and who this lady was.

“Who’s she?” she asked Arabella in a loud voice, pointing at Rebecca.

Arabella pushed her hand down “That’s Mr Wentworth’s Good Lady Missus, silly. You know, Mr Wentworth in the bank as has all your pennies.” Bridget looked amazed. She sort of assumed that Charles Senior lived there in his office all the time, and she’d never seen this lady hanging around.

Turning to Ben, she looked at him a little impatiently, "Would you please kindly, seat the young ladies so that we can get better acquainted."

“Yes, kindly seat us!” chided Arabella pertly, smiling sarcastically up at Ben.

Ben who had been trying to school his own features as he listened to Arabella, nodded once and promptly help the girls to their seats.  After they had been seated, Rebecca smiled again, "Now, would you both like to join in a cup of tea?  I find the brew my son has selected to serve here, very palatable."

“Beef tea would be just divine! Most very palatable indeed.” answered the girl from Virginia, trying to match Rebecca’s refined diction and looking forward to the meaty, salty brew. “And some biscuits to dip in would be just divine!”

Bridget nodded that she would like some, too.

“So, how come we ain’t never seen you before, Mrs Double-yuh?” enquired Arabella politely “Your old man been keepin’ you shut in?”

At the mention of tea from China, Bridget shouted “Cha!” loud enough to draw curious and disapproving looks from the smattering of other people in the dining room. Mr Crabbe and Bridget had slowly but surely become tea addicts. Mr Fa, their Chinese friend, was always drinking the stuff: hot, black or green, un-sugared and un-milked. At first, the slippery pimp and the addled girl had turned their noses up at the stuff, but then eventually tried it, and hated it. But somehow, when the oriental man prepared himself a pot, they didn’t want to miss out and forced down a cup. After a while, they’d started to crave a cup of cha as much as Fa himself, even though they still screwed up their faces as they drank it down.

Arabella, on the other hand, screwed up her face at the idea. Drinking tea was unpatriotic! What would her ancestor Richard ‘Big Dick’ Mudd, hero of the battles of Camden, Cowpens and Guiford Courthouse, think of her drinking British-style TEA?! She decided not to say anything, but just not let the tainted unamerican brew touch her Virginian lips.

“While we wait, perhaps you could both tell me how you came to be in Kalispell?”

“After you Bridg’!” said Arabella politely. “Arabella tell!” counted the ginger girl, knowing that her friend was somewhat more loquacious than herself. “All righty!” Arabella looked at Mrs W. “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin…”

“Once upon a time, there was this beautiful little girl with amazing red hair called Bridget Monahan, and she was travelling west with her mommy and daddy and all her brothers and sisters. An’ one day she was skipping along, just as happy as can be, and this very bad man in a wagon ran her over and squashed her real bad with the wheels of the wagon, and Bridget’s mommy ran up and said ‘Oh no, oh no, this bad man has squished my child real bad, won’t someone save her?’ And this bad doctor came along and said ‘I shall save your child, but I shall have to chop off her leg and it will cost you all your money!’ An’ the mommy said ‘Oh, do anything to save her!’ and he did, but they didn’t have no money to pay him, so they snuck off and left her there. You followin’ this?” she asked Rebecca. Bridget was sitting there enthralled at hearing her life story acted out like this, pulling faces of fear and excitement as the story unfolded.

“Anyhow, this mean doctor, he was real cruel to the little crippled ginger girl, making her go out to beg and whatnot to earn her keep. And she grew up and she grew into a beautiful young woman, despite her deformity and being a little slow due to the whole getting’ squashed by the wagon kerfuffle. An’ one day Mr Crabbe come along, an’ he was lookin’ to kill this man what molested his wife, and happen he find this feller molestin’ Bridget. This feller was mighty partial to molestin’ ladies, you understand. Anyhow, Mr Crabbe sees this feller all busy molestin’ Bridg’ and he say ‘I caught you, you…” Arabella’s voice dropped to a whisper and she leaned forward “… bastard…” she sat back up “… now you gonna eat lead!”

Suddenly Bridget, carried back to the moment, joined in, jutting her fingers forward like a gun and screwing her face up into a mask of hate “BANG!, BANG!, BANG!, BANG!, BANG!, BANG! Kill six times!”

“That’s right, killed him six times. No more molestin’ fer that feller. An then after that Bridg’ went to live with Mr Crabbe, and when that old Doctor feller said ‘Hey, speccy four-eyes, you owe me the money for her medical bills’, well Mr Crabbe, he just beat that old man half to death with his walking cane.”

Again, Bridget relived the scene, which she had clearly witnessed, by making a couple of hitting motions downwards and growling “WHACK! WHACK!!”

Remembering that Arabella had mentioned the name of Bridget's rescuer (Was he now her guardian?), she  mentally braced herself for another verbal onslaught, before asking both girls, "And what did Mr. Crabbe do after that?"

“Come HERE!” pronounced Bridget.

“Yeah, he came here.” Echoed Arabella.

Mrs Wentworth had, what?, about two thirds of a second to cut her off there; but as a learner, of course, she missed her chance. Arabella quickly filled the nice lady in with tales of Lorenzo’s subsequent career since arriving at Kalispell.

“Oh, he’s real respectable now, on account he couldn’t open a hothouse in…, no that ain’t right, what’d he call it, oh, a cat-house in these here parts due to what he calls ‘lack of local talent’. I think he means…” again, she leaned forward to whisper “… Ladies of the Evening. Anyhow, he runs a pho-tography business now, live folks, dead folks, scenes of hysterical interest and what not. Don’t tell no one, cause my folks don’t know I go round there on account of they think he was wantin’ to make me a [whisper] Lady of the Evening, but I done some modellin’ for him, you wanna lookee at my portly folio?” she offered, pulling a couple of prints out of her apron pocket: she always carried them with her in case Mrs Devereau found them in her room.

The first was innocuous, she was just dressed in a strange military uniform, a Vivandière from the Civil War, the  next was more questionable, Arabella was dressed up as Joan of Arc, tied to a stake with cardboard flames licking at her feet. The last picture, though, was the most disturbing of all: it was a double exposure of a dead body in a coffin, an old man, and a ghostly figure of Arabella standing next to him, dressed in a nightie with cardboard angel wings and a cleverly contrived halo, adopting an histrionic pose of, well, welcome was the best word for it. “Ain’t that clever how he made me see thru?” the girl said proudly. Bridget had seen them all before, but still looked on the daguerreotypes enthralled.

“Mr Crabbe says when I’m sixteen, I can go round there and work for him full time!” she announced happily, omitting to mention that he wanted her for her piano playing skills as well as her talent with the bereaved when taking the lucrative memento mori photographs.

"How about you, Arabella?  How long have you been in Kalispell?"

“Oh, I been here since December, except I was dead when I come here then. But they brought me back here again in January, and I was alive then.” She explained, badly, as she put away the photographic prints.

“See, I got half killed in this place called Whitefish when a house fell on my head and by the time they brung us here they thought I was completely dead and they put me in this freezing cold barn with all these dead folks, and I woke up and I reached over to this old lady next to me, and I says…” at this point she reached over to Bridget to act it all out. “… ‘Say, Missius Lady, why don’t they bring us no blankets, are you as cold as me?’ and this old lady’s head kinda lolled toward me like this:” she made her own head loll loosely on her neck and tipped it so she was facing Bridget with a slack open mouth and a blank dead stare. Bridget gave a little yelp.

“And you can believe me, Aunt Becky, I never got up and run so fast outta anywhere in my life, an I was trudging around in the snow and the streets was all empty and I thought I’d died an gone to H.E.L.!”

She remembered something else important about that whole incident, which seemed like a lifetime ago now.

“And you know what, Aunt Becky? It was your son big Mike as pulled me out o’ that house what fell on me. I think that’s why I got all mushy about him and fell all in love with him for a spell.” Ah, she remembered the happy, simpler times of suffering with that crush. “But then he broke my heart and ruined me for other men. I ain’t never fallin’ in love again with any man!” she said firmly. She looked up at Ben and Matt. “Sorry fellers!” she told them, sympathetically.  

After a brief sideways glance at Ben who had muttered something about thanking Mike the next time he saw him, Matt took a step forward. His mother was getting nowhere fast where Arabella was concerned and it was time to save her any more of Arabella's lively story telling.

"Mother," he said in a warm tone, "Miss Mudd, unfortunately lost her own family some time ago and she is under the care of her employer, Miss Matilda Devereau, who owns the Stardust Saloon. I can vouch for Miss Deveareau and tell you that she is a respectable woman who is more than capable in making sure that Arabella is kept safe and sound."

He then looked at Arabella's tea cup and smiled, "I think Miss Mudd, that your tea would be too cold to drink, which may be a good thing as I think Miss Devereau might be wondering where you are right now."

Knowing that Arabella might be concerned about Bridget, he continued, "Miss Monahan will be all right with my mother and Mr. Simons while she waits for Mr. Crabbe."

"Mother," he said in a warm tone, "Miss Mudd, unfortunately lost her own family some time ago and she is under the care of her employer, Miss Matilda Devereau, who owns the Stardust Saloon.  I can vouch for Miss Deveareau and tell you that she is a respectable woman who is more than capable in making sure that Arabella is kept safe and sound."

Arabella turned in her chair and gave Matt an evil glare. “Well, thanks fer ruinin’ my story!” she said sarcastically. She turned back to Mrs Wentworth. “Yeah, like he says, my Mammy and my Pappy and my little brother is all dead now, but…” she brightened, realised that Matt’s blundering hadn’t totally ruined her chances of recounting a long, long story starring herself “… what’s funny is the way they all died…”

He then looked at Arabella's tea cup and smiled, "I think Miss Mudd, that your tea would be too cold to drink, which may be a good thing as I think Miss Devereau might be wondering where you are right now."

Again, she swivelled in her chair. “Are you trying to get rid of me?!” she asked, candidly enough. “Hmph!” She stood up in righteous indignation. “Well, I know when I’m not wanted! And I wouldn’t drink your silly old tea anyway, who knows what amount of demon licker you’ve spiked it with Mr Wentworth. I’m high-tailing it outta this den of iniquity before you start shootin’ the ceiling in agin! You comin’ Bridg’?” she asked the ginger girl who shook her head. She was enjoying the tea, if slurping it rather loudly.

Knowing that Arabella might be concerned about Bridget, he continued, “Miss Monahan will be all right with my mother and Mr. Simons while she waits for Mr. Crabbe.”

“Well, so long, Auntie Becky, it’s been nice keepin’ company with you, if not with this rude son, o’ yours. So long, Fancy Pants!” she gave Ben a more cheerful farewell and stomped off muttering something like “Well, I like that!! Miss Devereau might be wondering where you are! Huh!”

Bridget just sat through it all drinking her tea. She put the cup back on the saucer with a clatter and informed the remaining trio “Arabella’s angry!” with a broad, incongruous smile on her face, and followed this up with a demand, or request, or was it a question? 

"Cake?!"