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Show First thing I noticed about the Bishop's wife was her ivory blonde hair cut short like a helmet framing a pretty face. She was five-and-a-half feet tall with a natural suntan, soft spoken, matronly in demeanor but debutante in carriage, and unfortunately prone to cellulite. But all that's superficial and ends; I have never met another person remotely like Noelle Hearthway. She is unique for grace and warmth throughout the world. Bishop Hearthway's house sat on a half-acre with high fences. The back yard, landscaped in inclining tiers that grew steeper the farther away from the house you went, had the appearance of an outdoor stadium. At the bottom was a lap pool with a concrete sun porch and a small grass lawn. Flower beds scaled the upper tiers studded with big rocks and tall trees. I'd taken hand at some landscaping back home and knew well what to do. It wasn't too hard work taking care of the bishop's yard so long as you staid on top of it, and some things, like planting flowers, I enjoyed. The grass had to be mowed, mulched, and fertilized, the flowerbeds weeded and checked for pests, and sometimes the trees needed pruning. The Bishop said not to bother watering-he'd do that himself-but there was wood chips to throw and a pool to clean and so forth, and by the time it was all on accounts I was fairly smote. "Toward summer's end you'll mind the young fruit trees. If the fruit gets too heavy it'll break the branches," The Bishop told me. "Only don't eat them. They're not ripe yet, and you'll get sick if you do." Come summertime Sister Hearthway laid on a lawn chair next to the pool sun tanning the whole while I did the job. She brought lotions and oils and sunglasses, sometimes the Top 40 station on a small radio, sometimes homemaker magazines. She |