Read Online Brookland by Emily Barton - Free Book Online

of the people she passed.
    â€œHey, Matty?” she heard Joe continue, though his voice did not dispel her reverie. “I’ve been thinking what to do about my sign.”
    â€œWell, you can’t take it down,” his wife said. “The whole neighborhood would miss it.” The Looselys’ sign depicted the king’s arms in vivid color and detail, and was popularly counted one of the best works of art in Brooklyn.
    â€œBut I can’t display it, either, as things stand. I wonder if Matty Winship might not employ his prodigious sign-makin’ skills to render the thing more patriotical?”
    â€œI’ll think on it,” Prue’s father said, and reached over to take Pearl from her arms, as if he’d intuited how heavy the child had grown. Just then, a litter of screaming piglets went running across the street, with a slave boy in hot pursuit; but even the pigs and the laughter they engendered could not draw Prue entirely from her thoughts. She enjoyed seeing the grandeur of the City Hall, and New York’s big brown church, which seemed as magnificent as a cathedral compared to Brooklyn’s low-ceilinged meetinghouse. She loved walking over the smooth, triangular common, and could imagine how lush it would be when the grass was green and the lilac hedges were in bloom. Her father pointed out the heavy iron bars over the door to the Bank of New-York—meant, Prue gathered, to assure people their money was safe inside. There were people everywhere in Manhattan, ten or a hundred times as many as in Brooklyn; but all she could really think was how plain this place was, and how wonderfully so. Had anyone present known how she’d misled herself with her childhood lucubrations, she might have died of embarrassment on the spot; but no one did. As she walked that day, she was attuned to her family and friends, but more deeply so to the city itself, and to the ebullient life coursing through its streets.
    When Roxana called out, “The Sign of the Crossed Keys—Matty, we should feed them before they faint,” Prue was startled to realize how hungry she’d grown. She also noticed Tem tugging at her sleeve, and picked her up, though Tem immediately pushed both hands against her shoulder to try to get free.
    â€œHow can you even remember the place?” Matty asked Roxana.
    She made a small plosive sound and shook her head. “It was wherewe ate after we signed the papers for the property,” she said. “I wouldn’t soon forget.”
    Prue liked the huge placard depicting crossed keys.
    Mrs. Loosely herded the children down the steps as if they were sheep.
    â€œWhuzzis?” Tem asked, looking bothered.
    Prue said, “I think we’re having dinner here.” She knew Mrs. Loosely served food at the Ferry Tavern, but mostly to bachelors like Dr. de Bouton and the brothers Hicks. Prue had picked at a smoked fish on her father’s plate there while idly listening to the adults discuss the news, but she had never eaten a meal away from her own table. Maggie appeared spooked by the steps leading down to the basement doorway and turned her face toward Isaiah’s coat; and once they were indoors, the din that reverberated from the vaulted brick ceiling startled Prue’s ears. All around, men of business were tucking into their chops as if nothing unusual were taking place outdoors. Most of them were dressed neatly, but none, she thought, so well as her father, who wore a clean collar and cuffs and a blue cravat though he was only wandering around with his family. Prue almost laughed to think she might ever have imagined such an establishment existing in the Land of the Shades; and her father, seeing the fleeting smile, brushed at her cheek to encourage it.
    Joe spoke to a woman in a red apron, who led them to a large table near the rear and returned mere moments later with a heaping basket of fried oysters and clams, a pitcher of cider, and