A reading for Clarks World magazine, Issue number 36, September 2009.

White Charles by Sarah Monette

The crate arrived at the Perrington on a Wednesday, but it was a Friday before anyone mentioned it to me.

Anything addressed from Miss Griselda Perrington, the younger of Samuel Mather of Perrington's two daughters was automatically routed to Dr Starkweather's office,

regardless of whose name she had written on it.

I was, in truth, intensely grateful for this policy.

For Miss Perrington most often addressed her parcels to me.

She felt that we were kindred spirits.

She considered me the only employee of the museum, with the sensitivity and intelligence to appreciate her fines.

Considering that she had inherited all of her father's magpie-like attraction to the

Utray and none of his discernment, her opinion was less flattering than one might think.

I endured some teasing on the subject, though not nearly as much as I might have.

In general, the curator's attitude was one of, there but for the

grace of God. They were even, I think, rather grateful, if not to me precisely, then, at least for my existence.

Miss Parrington's packages were inevitably accompanied by letters, sometimes quite lengthy, explaining

what she persisted in referring to as the provenance, although

it was no such thing.

I found this in a lovely antique shop and Bel gravia that Mimi showed me, conveyed no useful information at all since

nine times out of ten she neglected to provide any further clues to Mimi's identity.

And on the tenth time, when we managed to determine that Mimi was Sarah Brandon Forbes, wife of the eminent diplomat, a polite letter would elicit the response that Lady Brandon Forbes had never been in any antique shop in

Belgradeia in her life.

The bulk of Miss Parrington's letters described lavishly what she believed the provenance to be, flights of fancy more suited to

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