Would Isaac make a suitable husband for Dainty?
BY ALISON CARTER
SHE had taken a fancy to him when they were both at the Good Friday service in Wendlestead.
There were a lot of people there, because the village churches joined together for worship on some of the more important festivals.
Dainty spied him on the opposite side of the aisle, and he happened to see her at the same moment.
His eyes lingered on her, and he smiled.
It was the sort of smile that suggested to her that he had taken a proper fancy to her, too, right in that moment.
Dainty hated her name. It had been her mother’s choice, and now that she was eighteen years old she did not hold back from complaining about it.
“I am not dainty, Mother. Nobody can say it of me!”
Her mother gave Dainty an affectionate slap on the cheek and said she was bonnie and precious and ought to get herself a husband.
“Like an apple about to fall from the tree,” Mistress Gregg declared. “And I don’t care if you love the name or not.”
Now the smile on the face of the young man died as quickly as it had come, and he faced forward, concentrating on the priest.
Dainty saw him glance for a moment at his father, who was standing on Dainty’s side of the young man.
He was checking that his father had not noticed his inappropriate grin.
He cared very much, Dainty noted, what his father thought.
She had seen the young man before.
Wendlestead and Careborne and Hamblin, the three villages, were not big places, so it was inevitable.
She remembered his arms most particularly.
Dainty’s own father had long arms. Her uncle said he was like a Barbary monkey, which seemed rude to Dainty.
But he did have unusually long arms, and he said that they were an excellent thing in a wheelwright.
“For reaching,” he explained to her. “From one side of a cartwheel to the other. You want to find a husband with a long arm, whether or not he makes wheels.”
Dainty sneaked another look across the aisle.
Yes, the young man’s arms seemed of a good size, though his jerkin might have had the sleeves shortened so as to make them look long.
It was hard to tell.
In any case, he had a good square chin like her father’s.
Dainty had considered other men before when taking a look around for a husband, but none had really caught her attention.
She wished her parents would stop naggin
