Sarah Sunshine: A Montana Romance Novella by Merry Farmer

other day was gone, a plain brown thing in its place.  The shawl she wore was a ragged mess.
    “…which is why we must fight to oppose sin wherever we see it.”
    Roy finally caught Miss Jones’s words as the group marched on from the pharmacy and up to the foot of the new hotel’s porch.
    “Oh Lordy.”  Delilah rolled her eyes as Miss Jones, Miss Archer, and Miss Pickering formed a line facing Sarah at the bottom of the stairs.
    “And this, Sarah, this is the very viper’s den!” Miss Jones railed.
    Delilah stepped away from the lounge and the pile of bunting and leaned against the post at the top of the stairs.  “Morning, Viola.”
    Miss Jones pinched her face as tight as it would go, sniffed, and turned away from Delilah.
    Delilah tried again.  “Morning, Sarah,” she said, a smile in her voice.
    Sarah darted an anxious glance to the biddies before cautiously saying, “Morning, Mrs. Reynolds.  Morning, Roy.”  Her voice died altogether on his name.
    “Good morning, Sarah,” Roy scrambled to put things right.  “You’re looking pretty as a picture today.”
    Before Sarah could so much as blush and say thank you, Miss Jones barked, “You should not speak to the likes of them, Sarah!”
    “O-oh?”
    “Loose women and reprobates the lot of them!” Miss Pickering added.
    Martha popped her head up from her work with a dark scowl.  Delilah crossed her arms, a wry grin tipping the corner of her mouth.
    “What you see before you is an abomination against nature!” Miss Jones said, pointing up at the hotel.
    “Well, this’ll be a treat,” Delilah drawled to Roy.
    “The new hotel?”  Sarah glanced from Miss Jones to Delilah to Roy and up at the three stories of the hotel.
    “It is not just a hotel,” Miss Jones went on, “it is a den of iniquity!  It is a resting place for sinners of the basest sort.”
    “But … but I don’t think they plan to have entertaining there, do they?”
    “No!” Roy answered.  “Absolutely not!”
    “Don’t listen to her, Sarah.  It’s a hotel.  That’s that,” Delilah said.
    All three of the biddies sniffed and huffed like hens in a yard.
    “She would say as much.”  Miss Archer tossed her head, her carrot-red curls barely hidden by a bonnet of the ugliest green Roy had ever seen.
    “This edifice is a house of deprivation, Sarah,” Miss Jones went on.  “Three floors of private rooms.  Men and women staying together under the same roof.  Who knows what kind of wickedness they will get up to?”
    “Folks stay in hotels ‘cuz they want a place to lay their heads at the end of a busy day,” Delilah said.  “What they do behind their doors is none of my business and it ain’t none of yours either.  Of course, you never did quite grasp the concept of minding your own business, did you?”
    Miss Jones narrowed her eyes.  “Spoken like a true harlot!”  The other two clucked in agreement.  “Mark her well, girl.  She may claim to have put her past wickedness behind her, but she encourages the wickedness of others!”
    “Now hold on a minute.”  Roy took a step closer to Delilah’s side.  “Delilah’s well known for helping folks in Cold Springs.  She gave me a chance.”
    “See that?”  Miss Jones jabbed her long finger at Roy.  “The unrepentant harlot gives shelter to thugs and patronizers of women with no morals!”
    “I do believe the word you’re looking for is ‘patrons’, Viola,” Delilah corrected.
    Roy would have chuckled, but he was too busy keeping his rage in check.  Sarah hunched in on herself more with each word Miss Jones spoke.  She worried her fingers through the frayed edge of her shawl.
    “Sarah, what are you doing here?” he asked, rushing down the stairs to her.
    The biddies blocked the way, forming a wall between the two of them.
    “Tell him!” Miss Jones ordered.
    Sarah chewed her lip and twisted her shawl.  She glanced from Miss Jones to Roy with glassy, worried eyes, then said,