LOUIS ROSE IN TIERS FROM WHERE HALF-A-hundred steamers nuzzled up close to the foot of the levee. The mile-long expanse was swarming with wagons and drays, with steamboat agents and stevedores, with passengers and pursers. Goods—both inbound and outbound—stood in mounds along the cobblestoned slope that lay between the river and the solid block of warehouses fifty yards back from the water.“That, my love, is your new home,” Ann said, standing at the head of the Texas deck, holding Christina in her arms. “At the end of the season your papa’s going to find us a fine, new house up there in town. We’ll have a garden where you can play, and I can sit and do my needlework.”Christina gurgled and waved her arms.In these last two weeks Ann had picked up Chase’s habit of talking to Christina as if she understood every word. In truth, Ann had learned most of what she knew about taking care of the baby from him. She’d learned how to lay Christina across her knees to burp her, how to hold her daughter with one hand and diaper with the other.
