“I’ve wanted to know them better,” Sarah said, “and for Rachel to know them. Edna, you come with them.”

“I’m too old for lessons and school.”

As they laughed, Sarah turned to Rooster. “You must see Aunt Pea when you go to Savannah. She’ll help you find your tutor, and she’ll glory doing it. It’s just the kind of problem she loves. You will also do me a favor by helping her make up her mind to come see us for a long visit. She always comes about this time of year—has—but every year she says she isn’t coming this year and has to be coaxed, so I hope you’ll help me.”

“Gladly. I coax good.” Rooster laughed, and so did she.

“Very well, I count on you, Bruce! Will you just look at my child?”

They had come into the grove. Their buggies, it turned out, were separated only by a buckboard and a wagon with improvised plank seats. Rachel stood in the middle of a circle of children, four of whom were Rooster’s. They had run out with their friends the instant church was over, making the most of the few minutes a week they could be together. Rachel was singing for the group and they were, at least temporarily, quiet. As the adults approached, though, the circle broke, the older children running away together, leaving Rachel surprised and alone, her song interrupted.

Sarah knelt and hugged the child. Rachel then curtsied to Edna and Rooster, both of whom paid her kind notice before going to their buggy and calling for their scattered young ones. Sarah and Juanita settled themselves and Rachel into the buggy seat, Sarah talking the while to Edna and Rooster. The owners of the buckboard and the wagon had not yet appeared, having lingered to gossip in the church yard. It was sometimes close to an hour after Sunday services that the grove was finally cleared.

Edna called again to the four missing children, using their names: “Adam! Annabel! Doreen! You James! Come running!” When they did not appear, Rooster raised his voice to add a threat: “We’re leaving right now! You’ll have to walk all the way home!” Untying the reins, he slapped them lightly on the horse’s flanks and moved his buggy along after Sarah’s. The children suddenly appeared, screaming in delighted panic, “Wait! Oh, wait for us, Papa!”

Rooster slowed the horse without stopping, while Edna helped Annabel up on one side and he pulled Doreen up on the other. The two boys hopped up to the back seat over the hay box. And so the two parties rolled away home, the adults smiling and nodding when they caught each other’s eyes, the children calling mysterious inanities back and forth. The buggies would for a time maintain an equal pace side by side; then one would give way so that another buggy might pass.