One day Bruce who, when he came visiting at all in this busy season, generally rode over the back way through the fields to see how Leon and his hands were getting along with their work, happened instead to come by the front road, having been into Highboro to the post office and the cotton gin. Lauretta was alone on the porch, and Bruce halted his horse near her, meaning no more than to say a civil word or two before continuing around the house. But half an hour later, without his knowing how it happened or even actually realizing that it had, he had dismounted and was sitting on the edge of the porch, holding the horse’s reins, his body twisted around to converse with Lauretta.

At that moment Sarah came out of the hallway and, without hearing a word of their conversation, for they were talking in low voices, she was immediately on her guard. At the very sight of them she was, perhaps illogically, annoyed with Bruce. He had once pined after her; she had known and enjoyed it without encouraging him, and without his pining having hurt anyone.

But Lauretta was a different kettle of fish altogether. Innocence was not a quality she could claim. Sarah suddenly remembered the day of her sister’s arrival when Lauretta had been thrilled at the notion of her daughter’s being mistress of Oaks; and Sarah had told her that eventuality would be long deferred, because Bruce Davis would surely be master of Oaks for another twenty or thirty years. Was it possible that Lauretta had thought over that remark and was even now attempting to plant and nourish the idea of her being mistress of Oaks?

Yes, it was possible.

11

“I’m seventy-eight, you’re seventy-nine,” Posie said to Buttercup.

“No. You’re seventy-nine, I’m seventy-eight,” Buttercup said to Posie.

The two old women did no regular work nowadays. They kept a few chickens and piddled a bit in a patch of garden they called theirs; but mainly they sat dozing in the shade of a chinaberry tree, wearing long, clean, stiffly starched dresses with sun bonnets in matching material on their heads. If anyone stopped with them, they woke up and prattled in a bragging way about the one’s having been nurse to “Massa Leon” and the other, nurse to “Missy Selma.”

Leon and Selma were good about coming regularly to see and sit with them, asking how they were and what they needed, bringing little gifts of sugar and snuff and such. Their quarrel about ages was the only spark of conflict, even of interest, left them, and they made as much of it as they could. In truth, neither remembered how old she was, and they might have been twins for all the difference there was between them.