When she grabbed his hands, he immediately subsided into his chair. “That will be enough! I have—we have all of us been patient seeing how you’re an old friend, but my patience for one has come to an end! You have been here two days, drinking our likker and eating what vittles we could get you to eat, and you’ve been welcome. But you will not strike me, sir, nor anyone else. And you will leave here now. Don’t come back to this door until you can show a decent Christian face. God alone knows what that Miss Priss of a wife will say when she sees you. But you’re her problem, not ours, not now.” She took him by the hair and pulled his head up so that he was forced to look at her. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its anger and shaded into pity. “You are a mess, sure enough. Go on home like I say; and when you get yourself straightened out—but not before, remember!—you welcome here again.”

It was Florabel Bixby who spoke, eldest of the three sisters who lived in a house behind a hedge just outside of Highboro and were kind enough to entertain gentlemen of the neighborhood who lacked certain comforts in their family arrangements. Florabel was past her bloom, and more often than not assumed the role of motherly hostess to visitors, while her younger sisters, Pansy and Annette (now asleep, it was early morning), attended to the bedroom business. Florabel occasionally agreed to initiate a young man brought along by an older one, often his father or uncle, but the older men themselves preferred one of the younger sisters for their more active pleasures.

Leon thought about what Florabel said and nodded. He closed his eyes. Thinking he might drift into sleep again, she was on the verge of shaking his arm and speaking when he cleared his throat, then coughed to clear it better, opening his eyes. Getting to his feet, he steadied himself and walked to the living room wall that boasted the biggest mirror in the house. Unable to see, he stepped to a side table and picked up an oil lamp, holding it to his mirrored image. After studying himself quietly, he said, “My God,” and set the lamp down again. “If you will be so kind, Miss Flora as to give me coffee, I’ll be on my way.”