She did try to stay still whenever possible. True, she feared falling, tripping, other graceless mishaps. But mostly, she feared that her legs would remember the joy of running, and get away from her. As a child, she had been a top pick for neighborhood baseball games, and wrinkled her nose at her oldest sister’s warnings that she was bound to be an old maid if she couldn’t behave herself like a proper girl. But then, the strange summer that she was twelve, her knees melted every time Hubert Graham winked at her, and in her heart blossomed a yearning that he would see her as more than a great leadoff hitter.With her sister’s admonitions ringing in her ears, she finally set down a list of Rules for a Proper Girl, and determined to abide by them.

Though the Rules had evolved slightly in the intervening years, she continued to rehearse them, trying to keep the frog in check. One, always be pleasant and kind; hold your temper. Two, do not exert yourself visibly. Three, do not say out loud what you really think, at least not until you have carefully considered the consequences of such a statement. Four, ignore physical discomfort; if you cannot ignore it, at least do not mention it. Five, do not indulge in licentious thoughts, especially about mill hands; they are of a lower class. Six, remember to defer to a man’s point of view, even if you know he is wrong. Especially defer to your husband.

Wilma willed the music to begin again in her mind. Chopin’s Nocturne in B-flat Minor, she told herself, and then her hands could almost touch the swelling sad phrases, as she swallowed her nausea against the jouncing of the carriage as it rolled over jutting roots and veered around stumps that littered the roadway.

They drove past a row of tiny whitewashed clapboard houses, then made a sharp left. Visible to the right, now, across a stump-studded field, were narrow smokestacks, a large clump of buildings, and sky-high piles of planks that looked from this distance like matchsticks. The mill. She could hear the clump and drone and whine of its operation even above the staccato noises of the horses’ hooves.