Page 26 of A New World for the Irish Daughter

“I’m not surprised,” Dr. Brown told her frankly, “but I am glad to hear it. Now I believe next Saturday is your evening off. Would you like to come to supper? It will be a quiet engagement, just my family and me, but I would like to hear more of how you’re getting on, considering I vouched for you personally.” Her eyes creased in a smile as she finished drying her hands.

“Oh.” Maggie blinked in surprise. While she’d certainly appreciated Dr. Brown’s patronage, she had not supposed the woman considered her the kind of acquaintance who might grace her dinner table. She was humbled that she seemed to doso. “Thank you,” she replied, after a second’s startled pause. “I would be glad to, of course. Very glad.”

It wasn’t until Dr. Brown had left that Maggie realized she had nothing to wear to such an occasion. The gorgeous gowns Theo Stein had bought her back in Chicago, suitable for a lady, had been sold when she’d left that city. She’d needed the money and she’d been grateful to leave such painful memories behind. Besides, she’d thought at the time, when would she possibly have the opportunity to wear such dresses again?

Now, however, she needed a dress, not as ostentatious as the ballgown Theo had bought her to meet the eminent Bertha Palmer, first lady of Chicago society in, but rather the kind of dress, modest and elegant, she could wear to dinner at a doctor’s house. Well, Maggie told herself as she cradled the freshly washed baby to bring back to his mother, she hadn’t been a seamstress for nothing.

It was time to get to work.

CHAPTER 15

November 1893

Maggie stood on the steps of Charlotte Brown’s residence in Haight Ashbury, an upper middle-class neighborhood of stately Victorian homes near Golden Gate Park. It was elegant without being showy, unlike the magnificent mansions of Nob Hill, and located a little further out from San Francisco’s downtown, recently connected to the rest of the city by streetcar.

It had taken Maggie half an hour to walk there from the hospital, through the gathering autumnal dusk, and she took a moment to compose herself before heading up the stone steps to the house’s covered portico.

She’d taken pains with her appearance—her hair dressed more loosely than its usual regulation-tight bun, a small, felt hat decorated with a single blue feather she’d designed herself, rather than her usual starched cap gracing her head.

As for her dress… Maggie glanced down at the navy-blue silk with some trepidation. She’d bought the fabric with two months’ worth of her stipend, spending far more than she knew she should, and worked her fingers near to the bone, her eyes gritty with exhaustion, cutting and sewing late into the night. Theresult was, she hoped, a study in elegant simplicity—the blue silk had no ornamentation, save for black, cloth-covered buttons down the back, and an edging of black brocade on the sleeves. Its high collar and sweeping skirts were certainly modest, and appropriate, Maggie hoped, to the occasion, without her seeming as if she were putting on airs… but what if she’d gotten it wrong?

It had felt strange, to cut and sew a dress again, as she’d remembered the days not long ago, when fashion had occupied her thoughts foremost, and what a woman wore had meant more to her than anything she might have thought or said. Now, Maggie thought, the dress was simply a means to an end, a way to fit in and feel appropriate. She hoped the gown accomplished that.

“Nurse O’Halloran!” Dr. Brown greeted her after a parlormaid had admitted her to the drawing room—a comfortable room with a fire burning in the hearth and an interesting collection of art and antiques gracing its walls and display cabinets. Dr. Brown was clearly well traveled.

She wore a plain, dark dress with a lace collar and a cameo at her throat, and Maggie breathed a silent sigh of relief because her dress did indeed seem appropriate.

“Thank you again for your kind invitation, Dr. Brown,” she told her. “It’s so nice to be in a home again.” And it had been a long time since she’d been in a home as nice as this one, she thought as she took in all the comfortable furnishings and artwork.

“I remember that well,” Dr. Brown replied on a laugh. “And please, in the comfort of my home, you must call me Charlotte.”

She would remain Dr. Brown at the hospital, Maggie understood, but she appreciated the familiarity here. “Then you must call me Maggie,” she said, just as a young woman andman entered the drawing room, both looking to be in their early twenties.

“My daughter Adelaide and my son Philip,” Charlotte introduced them. “My younger daughter, Harriet, is still away at school.”

Maggie could see the family resemblance—Adelaide had the same dark eyes and brows as her mother, as well as the trim but solid stature. Philip was taller but as solidly built, his brown hair swept back from a high, aristocratic forehead.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Maggie murmured.

“Adelaide graduated from Cooper Medical College, right here in San Francisco,” Charlotte told her, “and Philip received his degree from Harvard Medical School just this last spring.”

“So many doctors in the family,” Maggie exclaimed, and everyone laughed as if she’d said something witty.

“An aperitif,” Charlotte stated firmly, and she rang a bell to summon the maid.

“Mother says you’re training to be a nurse, Miss O’Halloran?” Adelaide asked, smiling. She had the same air of brisk capability as her mother, with a frank and friendly look in her dark eyes.

“Yes, I’ve just started, and please call me Maggie.”

“Then you must call me Adelaide.”

“And I won’t be left out!” Philip chimed in as he accepted a glass of sherry from the maid. “You must call me Philip.” His dark gaze rested briefly on her in a way that seemed entirely friendly, without even a hint of salacious insinuation or innuendo. With a jolt, Maggie realized that as a young man of means and looks, she’d expected him to act like Theo Stein, languidly louche and indiscreetly flirtatious. Philip, however, acted as what she suspected he truly was—an accomplished, personable young man.

“I am so intrigued by all these antiques and artefacts,” Maggie remarked as she accepted her own crystal glass of sherry with thanks. “You must explain them to me, for I fear I am not well traveled.”

“Mother is the well-traveled one in the family,” Adelaide told her. “Her father was a Presbyterian missionary, and they traveled to Chile for some years when she was a child, as well as all over the United States.”

Philip took her elbow to guide her in front of a rather fearsome-looking wooden statue of a human figure with a strong, carved nose and deeply set, blank eyes. “This is achemamüll, from the Mapuche tribe, made before Columbus ever sailed the seas,” he told her. “They used them to decorate graves, the way we use headstones. Sadly, this one was taken from its sacred site. My mother has said she hopes it still honors the resting place.”