Fay had been christened at three months and Lilian saved the flowers from around the christening bowl, and pressed them in the Bible, but they did not get around to baptizing Sally or Porter. Why, Lilian could not have said; she went to church on holidays, but church was not large in their lives.

As a little girl, Fay climbed into strangers’ laps, and pointed to a mole and said they had some dirt on them. She was a shiny child with dark glistening hair and eyes like compasses. Sally was fat and white, with Gilbert’s heavy mouth and Lilian’s block chin. She followed Fay around and was told by Fay what to do. Porter, from birth, had a forehead which knuckled and penetrating eyes which did not look away when meeting people for the first time.

It changed things of course when the children came, but they had planned on that. Gilbert, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, rode the girls around on his shoulders, grinning, handing them off to Lilian with a frightened look when they began to cry. Lilian would calm them and hand them off to Anna, who was firm with them, squaring them off on their little routines, just as she had done with the furniture.

35 • Something troubles Gilbert

35 • Something troubles Gilbert

HE WORKED with men named Mr. Frye and Mr. Winter and Mr. Baldwin. There was also Joe Morgan, Bill O’Brien and Ken Stone. Gilbert didn’t talk much about the actual work, but he did mention these people. Also, the typists Mrs. Templeton and Miss Lyne, their names came up too. Part of Gilbert’s job entailed traveling to New Haven and New London, and occasionally Providence, and when he returned would tell Lilian if the trips had gone well, or that the leaves were changing in New Bedford a little later than in Boston, or that in Providence it was always raining. Sometimes he went to the docks to meet shipments, but mostly he was hovering over figures at his desk and having meetings. He wasn’t particularly attached to his job at White, Frye & Co., Lilian knew that, but one did need to have work.

After he’d been there four years he stopped talking about Mr. Frye in the front office, or mentioning Ken Stone’s flirtation with Miss Lyne, and Lilian wondered if he might be thinking about leaving. Before they were married, he had told her that he wanted to do something different, eventually, possibly something in the civic sphere. Now, he found it was time to consider it more seriously.