day, is she making a joke? The fellows can’t take that. It makes them feel thick.”
“She is making a joke,” said Elizabeth. “I laugh all the time at what she says.”
“But you know her. A fellow doesn’t want to feel as though a girl is running rings around him, at least not till he marries her.” Now they fell silent. This was, indeed, the first Margaret had ever heard about her demeanor. She had thought she was too old to have her feelings hurt, and now they were.
BY Margaret’s January return to the little house, Lavinia, Mrs. Early, and Mrs. Hitchens had become friends, almost a regular threesome. According to Lavinia, Mrs. Early had come up to her in Macomb’s general store and spoken to her in a very friendly way about both Beatrice and Margaret, and then Mrs. Early had invited her to tea. The three of them turned out to have many interests in common, though none of those she listed was poker. When the two elegant ladies came visiting, they sat in the front room and knitted or crocheted. Or they trimmed hats. Or they talked about the exposition, and made plans to go to St. Louis and see everything, “even if it takes three or four trips to do it.” Mrs. Early chatted genially about places she had been—yes, that spa in Germany (Baden—the word itself meant “baths”), where you could see the excavations of the very spots where the Romans had taken their hot baths. She had also been to Paris and to London, of course, and taken hikes in the Lake District (“I love Wordsworth, don’t you?”) and the Scottish Highlands (“I grew up reading Scott, didn’t everyone? I do believe it ruined me”), and she had been to Menton in France, and Amalfi and Rome in Italy (where, in fact, she had met Mrs. Hitchens and invited her to come to Missouri). And then she had been planning to go to Texas, to visit her son there, but when Captain Early returned to town, she didn’t want to leave while he was here. She sprinkled references to Captain Early into her conversation—exactly enough so that they would know she had no worries about him. When Margaret asked about the scandal, Lavinia said, “Scandal?” and Margaret decided that Robert had not known what he was talking about. Margaret got used to hearing Mrs. Early talk about her son—he had installed a very nice telescope in one of the upstairs bedrooms, he was particular about his coffee, Mrs. Early was knitting him fingerless gloves because he wouldn’t have a fire in the upstairs. All of these matters came up very naturally.
Mrs. Early made a point of conversing with Margaret about books. If she had read something Margaret liked, she would compliment her taste, and if she hadn’t read it, she would frankly state that she wished she might someday. At last, after telling her for weeks about her extensive library, Mrs. Early invited her to come and choose a few things to read.
But by that time it was February, and there was no walking out, because of a tremendous cold snap. Lavinia kept a big fire in the kitchen stove, and they sat there most days and tended the fire. The cats sat with them. It was said that it was twenty or thirty or forty below, but Margaret didn’t know. Supposedly, at forty below, if you threw a bucket of water into the air, the drops would freeze before hitting the ground. Old Paul, the hired man, shoveled a path between the house and the barn, and she went out, bundled up, several times during the day and made sure that Aurelius had plenty of hay to keep him warm, and that his blanket was properly adjusted. The cold made Lavinia feel old and lonely—she started talking a bit about Margaret’s father. It was the death of Lawrence that “did him in,” she said. What had happened to Ben hurt him, but that was the dangers of boys, dangers he well knew. He had had no chance to save Ben when the boys brought him home from the railyard. Lawrence lingered for weeks, though, and Dr. Mayfield had thought that if he were only better educated, or more experienced, or more inventive, he might somehow preserve him. Afterward, he went to his patients as he always had, but with new self-doubts. “When someone died, he knew he had done something wrong, and when someone