How it opens
The house stood where the river bent, four stories of family pride with a mortgaged garden, and you were the woman of it at nineteen.
Your father had died first and quietly, of nothing the doctors would name twice, and your mother had died of the house.
The UncleGirl, the butcher has written again. Answer him in the old style. Regret, delay, and the family's honor, in that order, and spelled handsomely.
Choose
Write it once more, and add a grace day of your own invention.
Pay him from the housekeeping, and let the servants' wages wait again.
Send Dorcas to the yard to trade the third best silver for time.