Read Fade to Grey for Free Online

hiding it in her hand.
    “Purple? Oh no, my eyes are blue. It’s strange that you ask. Sometime they look different colors in different lights.”
    “I didn’t mean anything, Miss. Just…I just thought you might have the pink eye or an infection. We could have Royce go to town and get you some tincture from the doctor.”
    Rose certainly was persistent, Donna thought. It would be a good thing to keep her eye on her, until she got this time travel thing straightened out.
    “Rose, I used to have a cat with different color eyes,” Annabelle spoke up. “You know odd things occur in nature that we can’t explain.”
    Now, Donna sat up halfway in the bed.
    “I’d really like to wash up,” she told the maids.
    “Certainly, we'll fetch you a bucket of water in a minute. We have some boiling in the kitchen. We just wanted to show you the clothes we selected. Rose picked out a variety of sizes. You look to be sort of a medium sized person.”
    “Thank you so much. Oh, and I found the chamber pot last night.” Now that was a fun experience.
    Donna couldn't very well tell them she had got up immediately after they left and went into what was the bathroom when she last stayed in the room. However, it was simply a large storage closet, holding mops, rags, bottles of some kind of foul smelling disinfectant and piles of bedding. From the looks of things, this room was not used much and the closet was probably handy to store things for the second floor.
    Yanking the curtains open to get some moonlight in the room, Donna had felt under the bed and found a chipped enamel chamber pot. Reluctantly, she used it but at least she got some relief. She would have to get used to the absence of indoor plumbing––either that or holding her liquid intake in the evenings.
    There was a moment of awkward silence and she realized the maids might be hanging around to see if she had any more unusual body markings when she left the bed. Luckily, except for the streaked hair and tattoo, she had nothing else futuristic. She did have pierced ears, but that was not unusual in cultures around the world. She'd removed the contact lenses, so she could think of nothing else that might pique their interest.
    “Er…we'll fetch your water, won’t we, Rose?”
    For some reason, they wanted to travel in a pair, Donna figured so they could compare notes on their observations. Annabelle remarked to having weak eyes, and Rose might not have been the brightest, but she had street smarts. So be it, she’d watch her step around them.

    Donna picked through the clothes and found what appeared to be a nice clean outfit. Long legged underwear, a kind of undershirt or button front bodice affair and a long sleeved white blouse seemed appropriate. Nothing had zippers, everything was buttoned or tied. The waistbands and collars were free of any tags. There were no union labels, no dry clean tags, or even sizes. She saw by the stitching that everything was handmade. She wondered when mechanical sewing machines were invented and had to admit she had no idea. The two maids hurried up with the water, Donna noticed. Her presence was probably the best gossip they’d had in a long time. So every minute they were away, she figured, they might miss something. She also had the feeling that they would not be passing the gossip along to Mrs. Bradenton if they cared to keep their positions. For that, she breathed a sigh of relief.

    They had returned with a wooden bucket, a bowl of soft soap, some combs and hair pins. Annabelle filled the wash basin in the stand near the window and Rose stood nearby with towels. They waited until Donna washed her face and hands, and moved to her neck and chest. Since she had no deodorant, she soaped and rinsed heavily. When Rose handed her the towel to dry herself, she also offered a tin of talcum powder and a soft bristle brush. Donna took and dabbed the powder under her arms and thought it would be comparable to commercial deodorant. Rose also