At Beulah Land, Lovey kept the house and its servants in strict order, using the absence of the master and the mistress for a thorough autumn cleaning, beating rugs, sweeping ceilings, airing and sunning mattresses and pillows, and taking quilts down from shelves to see that they were fit for the winter. One of her more satisfying occupations each autumn was checking the apples and peaches they had dried on flat boards in the sun, afterward packing them tightly in thick cotton bags and hanging them high in a dry place where air might circulate around them and keep them from molding. The quart and half-gallon jars of pears, peaches, plum jam, strawberry and blackberry preserves, watermelon rind preserves, honey, tomatoes, snap beans, pickled cucumbers and beets were counted and stored, and a record was made of their numbers and precise location.

Without anyone’s having clearly deputized him as such, Roscoe Elk acted as general overseer of all that was not Lovey’s domain. During this time Leon stayed with the Davises, and Selma with her Aunt Nell and Uncle Felix in Highboro. The minister at St. Thomas’s Church had promised that he would set up a schedule to teach Leon and Rooster algebra, map-drawing, Plato, and Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

Bonard went off to college in Savannah very soon after Deborah and Arnold returned to Beulah Land. Leon was sorry to be home again, having enjoyed the company of Rooster and Bonard, particularly the latter, since neither of them shared Rooster’s interest in farming matters. Selma was glad to have the fields and woods to walk over again. She felt easy enough with her placid Aunt Nell, but the hearty joviality of Uncle Felix more often than not distressed her. She was glad too to see her father again.

She was to go into Highboro with Leon during the winter to attend classes at a day school for young ladies, where she would receive instruction in French, drawing, music, and English composition.

Selma took no pleasure in schooling, although she did interest herself in the illustrated books at Beulah Land having to do with natural history. One morning in October she waited for Leon to drive them in the pony cart to Highboro, sitting in the little front parlor just where her mother and Uncle Felix had sat the day she thought she was dying. She had a book open on her lap, and when Arnold came in from an early hunt—he had started at four—with their good neighbor Benjamin Davis, she said, “Papa, have you ever seen a Chinaman?”

He paused at the stairs. “No, Puss, I haven’t.”

“I’m not sure I believe there is such a thing,” she said gravely.

He smiled down at her. “Oh, yes. There are Chinamen and Japanese, who are much the same, from all report. There are Russians and Turks and Eskimos—all quite wild and different from us, I believe.”