the novelty of the situation. She put her hands back on the handlebars and pressed on, this time hurrying as much as she could with her long and flapping skirts. She said, “I have to keep going. It’s just there. We’re almost to the Larimers’.”
“Are we? I’ll be sorry to give up your company.” He neither smiled nor bent toward her in any way; she was so frantic by now that this remark seemed to her to have no meaning at all, to be launched onto the frigid air like a snowflake. But he exerted himself to keep up with her, and then they were at Mrs. Larimer’s gate, and she was fumbling with the latch. He didn’t help her, just held on to his staff and observed her. When she had gotten through the gate with the bicycle, he tipped his hat and said, “Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, Miss Mayfield. I admire your fortitude.”
She dropped the bicycle beside the path and ran up the steps to the porch. Charlotte, Mrs. Larimer’s hired girl, opened the door at once, and then it was all frostbite and tears and warmth and concern. After that occasion, she didn’t see Mr. Early (Captain Early, Dr. Early, she subsequently found out) for a very long time.
THE MARRIAGE took place—a morning wedding at Gentry Farm, with Beatrice in a dark-green velvet dress and Robert in a suit with a collar of the same dark-green velvet. Owing to the time of year, Lavinia and the Bells had decided that it would be better to have a small wedding in town followed by a larger party in St. Louis after the New Year, and their caution turned out to be justified—snow began falling during the afternoon reception at Mrs. Larimer’s. It was so thick that if the guests hadn’t left early it would have been impossible to get back to the farm. As it was, the horses pulling the carriage had to struggle the last quarter-mile, and Margaret and Elizabeth had to huddle down, covered over and suffocating with blankets, while John Gentry whipped the horses and urged them forward. Lavinia would not let the girls jump out and walk, because their dress boots were thin and the snow was already eight inches deep. Then they spent the days between the wedding and Christmas isolated at the farm, drinking tea and nursing John Gentry through a bout of catarrh. The weather continued cold and wet; only Lavinia went with Robert and Beatrice to the marriage celebration in St. Louis.
Margaret finally met Dora and the other Bells in the spring. Dora turned out to be a squat, plain girl with thin hair and nothing more to offer, Margaret thought at first, than a bicycle and a kind nature. But Dora seemed to take a great and flattering liking to Elizabeth and Margaret, incessantly seeking their advice and offering to take them places around town. She was far more sophisticated in her bringing up than they were, but, as Lavinia pointed out, she was the sort of unfortunate girl whose own mother never gets over her disappointment in what she has produced. There had been the nanny all the way from England, and now a boarding school in Des Peres. One night, while they were undressing for bed in the big house on Kingshighway, Lavinia remarked, “You girls can’t know how short your lives have been. From the mother’s point of view, first there is the infant, then, almost immediately, there’s the young woman. That’s how it seems.” She lowered her voice, though they were sitting by the fireplace in their own set of rooms, the door shut and everyone else gone to bed. “When a lady’s first concern is to preserve herself unchanged by the passage of time, it may be that the easier course is to simply forget the girl exists.”
But Mrs. Bell was kind to Margaret and Elizabeth, inviting them to stay for a month in the winter, and taking a special interest in Elizabeth. She and Elizabeth were the same height and built in a similar way, and one of Mrs. Bell’s fancies was to dress Elizabeth in her own old clothes, and to give certain pieces to her, on the understanding that Elizabeth would use her skills to remake these dresses and coats, preserving the fine goods but updating the style. John Gentry said, “Does she think the girl is going to have to sew for her living?” But Mrs.