Excerpt from The Latecomers by Helen Klein Ross, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

1.
Bridey

Hollingwood
October 1927

That morning, hours after the cock crowed but before the townhall bell chimed eight, Bridey mounted narrow steps leading up from the kitchen, holding tight to the fluted handles of a silver oval on which Mr. Hollingworth's breakfast quivered. Serving gloves weren't insisted upon at Hollingwood as they were in the big houses on Fifth Avenue, where a friend from home worked, but Bridey sometimes wore them anyway - it spared prints on the silver, which saved time in the long run; the trays and pouring pots needn't be polished so often.

Mr. Hollingworth's breakfast was meager fare compared to the morning feasts she and Nettie used to cook up: blood sausages and custards, fruited popovers and muffins, eggs poached and scrambled and over easy or hard, depending on how he and his four children preferred them that day. But that was years ago, when the children were children, and breakfasts were rollicking starts of days in the dining room instead of quiet meals for an invalid who spent most of the time in bed.

A poached egg on toast is what she was carrying now to Mr. Hollingworth, along with a pot of coffee and a pitcher of cream she'd skimmed from the top of a bottle left this morning by the Byfield boys who'd taken over their father's milk route. The bread was rack-toasted, despite the newly acquired electric toaster, which she hid in the pantry so it didn't rebuke her. Sarah, the eldest, had brought it back from a traveling exhibition of housewares in Hartford, but Bridey didn't trust the contraption, convinced that its complicated workings couldn't be depended upon to produce the shade of toast she was after and, even more important, couldn't be depended upon not to electrocute her. She'd racked toast on a fire for almost all of her thirty-four years. What would be the advantage of doing a task differently when it was one she had mastered and could do by hand without thinking? The electric cream separator, from the same exhibition, sat next to the toaster, both shrouded by covers that shielded them not only from dust but from Sarah's notice should she wander into the pantry, an unlikely occurrence.

Bridey appreciated electrification in moderation. The house had been electrified ten years ago, soon after she'd stepped off the boat from the west country of Ireland, where electric lights were unheard of and they got along fine without them, thanks very much. Now, she appreciated being able to sew or read at night, which was hard to do by the flickering light of a candle. She sang the praises of the electric icebox. But Americans believed that if a thing was good, much more of a good thing was even better. Electric irons, electric sewing machines, even electric lighters for men's cigars - Bridey couldn't see the need for any of these, though Mr. Tupper, the electrician, assured her that such laborsaving devices were already proving indispensable to housekeepers.

A bell sounded in the stair corridor. The rear kitchen door. Bother. Bridey stepped backward and, careful to keep the tray in balance, turned and descended the steps. She set the tray on the counter, covered it with the silver dome, removed her gloves, and crossed the kitchen to open the door.

There, on the gray-painted porch, stood Mr. Tupper. It was as if he'd heard her maligning his work in her head.

"Come in, come in." She swung the door wide to welcome him warmly, feeling a need to make up for the offense.

Mr. Tupper took off his cap as he stepped inside and set down his toolbox on the wide pine-board floor. "The Canfields were top of my list today, but they have guests stopping, so I'm here to replace your duals if it suits."

"That would be grand," said Bridey, pulling the door closed behind him. The sparrows were cheeping like chickens today. Yesterday, the door had been left ajar and one of them had flown in and it had taken her a mortal hour to shoo it out of the house.

Excerpted from The Latecomers Copyright © 2018 by Helen Klein Ross. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company, New York. All rights reserved.