lived, he felt that nature had prevailed. Nature, I told him, is what kills them, but that’s how it got to be. I dreaded that something would happen, and then it did.” Lavinia sighed. Margaret listened and made her own sympathetic sighs, but her memories of her father were dim, and entirely overlaid by the cacophony of subsequent events. She remembered him more as a doctor than as a father, a tall, respected man who looked at her in a judicious, discerning way, to be sure that she was healthy and clean. When Lavinia chatted and reminisced about her childhood, and the boys, and her first years in town with Dr. Mayfield, how appealing Lawrence and Ben were, so healthy and active, and how she used to sit in the parlor and laugh at their antics when the doctor roughhoused with them, rolling them over and tickling them, turning them upside down in gales of laughter, making them run about and pretending to jump out and catch them, carrying them on his shoulders, it seemed to Margaret that she was peering through windows into bright, appealing rooms where everyone was merry and full of life. The people in the rooms of Lavinia’s reminiscences were strangers to her, and Margaret could not get in. Anyway, it was painful to think of Lawrence, of her hand moving upward into his grasp, of herself sitting on his shoulders with her fingers twined in his hair, of his saying, “You hungry, baby?” Had he said that? She seemed to hear his voice, boyish but kind, saying that.
And then, the next day, the coldest day of all, Mrs. Early came in a sleigh she hired from the livery stable and took them off to her house for supper and to stay the night.
There was a fire in the kitchen, a fire in the parlor, and a stove in the library made, not of metal, but of stone of some sort. The library was warm in every corner, which seemed like a miracle to Margaret and Lavinia. With the gas lit everywhere, the rooms glowed, and Margaret’s limbs seemed to warm and soften and stretch. Her very skirts lost their chill stiffness. Carpets and drapes seemed to envelop her, to give her the cozy comfort that a baby might feel when snug in his cradle. The library was two walls of books, floor to ceiling, in English, French, German, books Mrs. Early and Mrs. Hitchens had bought, but also books the sons had brought home or sent home. It seemed to Margaret that a door had opened, and rooms she thought she would never enter were hers to walk about in.
Mrs. Early held up a lamp, and they idled down the rows, looking at the titles: Mr. Verne in English and French (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours, Sans dessus dessous), Mrs. Gaskell (North and South), Mr. Surtees (Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities). She was just taking down this last and opening the cover when a deep voice behind her said, “Try this one, Miss Mayfield.”
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Early. “No telling what he’s giving you.” But she laughed.
Margaret hadn’t realized that Captain Early had entered the room, but now he placed a tome in her hands. It was a book called The Hound of the Baskervilles, from England, and brand-new. She had heard of Mr. Conan Doyle, but never read anything by him. The book wasn’t terribly long, and when she opened it, the first thing she saw was a picture of a large dog.
Mrs. Early said, “Is that some mathematical treatise, Andrew?”
Andrew said, “Certainly not,” and went over and sat down in one of the chairs beside the stove. He at once picked up a book of his own. Margaret pretended to look at the one he had handed her, but really she looked at him. He was even taller than she remembered from that day with the bicycle, but his suit of clothes was neatly tailored and his face was attractive in its way (she thought of her own face and tried to compose it—not “glare,” as Mercer said), with pale whiskers and a large but straight nose. He conformed himself a bit to the chair, and took on a quality of lengthy grace. His hair was fair, neatly cut and combed. Only Robert Bell and the president of the bank bothered to comb their hair. Every other man took his hat off and put his hat