“Mother,” I began.

“Do not joke so.” Susannah stood abruptly, knocking the stool to the ground behind her skirt.

Mother stopped midstitch and looked round. Perhaps she saw the tears threatening to spill over Sue’s eyes, for Mother put her sewing down and gave a little smile to reassure.

“Dear girl. Do not be afraid. It is where we all of us end—at the altar with fine flowers and a man.”

“Mother!” Susannah pleaded.

“And then will I bring home my own dear Johnny after the wedding, at long last.”

I grew cold. We neither of us spoke, and Mother, suddenly distracted, stood up, letting her sewing slip to the floor, and moved over to inspect the lambrequin upon the piano top.

“Who is Johnny, Mother?”

But she had begun humming, and the bustle of her dress swayed slowly, as if there played a waltz tune in her head.

29 December

From time to time, Mother will lift her head and consider us, vagrantly—her attention on us and away all at once; I have to fight the urge to clap my hands or call out “Mother!” And just now, it came to me that perhaps this may be how it is to have lost a mother. For she is not here, divided from us by an invisible hand, and yet there she sits. She is as absent already as if I only remembered her.

Who is Johnny? I have a dread about the answer. I have a deep and everlasting dread.

Thank God, George returns within the week, though he will find a house sorely lacking in warmth and the gladdening spirits of a feminine hearth.

I put down the pen each night and cup my hand around the candle flame—and think of Ludlow Thomas’s eyes. That is all I can allow myself. He is far from here. And I fear his one letter is but a golden clasp he has snapped shut upon our story.

30 December

Drab and drear, the day is close about us. We have not been able to keep abreast of the washing without Mother’s help, and so I am writing with cuffs smudged by last week’s ink, and soon to be blackened further, but I do not care! Abby worries none of us is eating enough, none of us, that is, but myself—for I am prodigiously hungry and dine on nut cakes and apples all morning. Susannah has begun to look indeed like the paper ladies she so admires. And Mother—

I was glad to be home last evening after the trip into town. I thought a curious quiet followed us up the street as we made our way to Brown’s. I cannot be certain of this, but a watchfulness seems to have replaced the usual neighborliness. We are isolate at Grange House, to be sure, but I do not remember having been made to feel it so before.