“No!” Lovey thundered. “I will tell her! You are doing everything you can to make everything worse! Everybody has forgot, or all but—now, moving that boy into the house, they’ll remember, and there’ll be all the talk again.”

Sarah’s voice sounded tired when she answered. “I can’t help that, Lovey.”

“What will Mister Leon say to it?”

“I’ll explain it to him.”

“You shame him!”

“It will be all right.”

“No, it will not!”

“Lovey, now that is enough. I will not have even you tell me what I may do.”

Leon did not return from town for noontime dinner, nor had Sarah thought he would. He did not ride into Highboro every day, but when he did, she knew not to expect him until late afternoon, and sometimes not until well after supper. Ordinarily, since she was the only one to be served, she would have insisted on taking her noon meal at the kitchen table with Lovey and Myrtis. They had been surprised and uncomfortable the first time she did that, but they had accepted her company when she pointed out impatiently how absurd it was for her to sit alone in the big dining room, with Selma eating in her room, and Leon in town. That they felt a little sorry for her too made it easier for them; and she was so very friendly about it, it would have been rude of them to make further objection.

Today, however, knowing Lovey to be angry with her, she allowed her place to be set in the dining room, and she ate alone. Then, seeking comfort, she went out to find Ezra. He was not in the barns with any of the ailing, non-working animals. He was not in the kitchen of his and Lovey’s cabin where she often watched him making his medicines. She found him with Floyd in the smithy shed. She greeted both with a nod and sat down on a bench as they continued to work.

Floyd finished sharpening a plow blade that had been dinted by rough stones turned by the plowmen. Setting it aside, he looked at her and finally acknowledged her presence.

“Mama told me about Roman,” he said drily. “Myrtis and her girls are clearing out the room. I’ll set up the bed in a little while, so he can sleep there tonight. Better if he’s out of Roscoe’s way quick, if he’s going to be.”

“I didn’t plan it; but the way it happened; it was the thing to do.”

Floyd looked at her as seriously as she spoke to him. Unlike his mother, he did not bring automatic disapproval to every unexpected turn in the day’s events. He also remembered that Roman might have been his own son instead of Leon’s. Still, he said, “He might have had his bed in the school.”