Beside her, Ellen, all in brown, looked like a frail autumn leaf, but of the two he reckoned Ellen might last the longer. She was nothing but a wiry little engine now, no flesh to wear away—well, the village would be a different place when those two went, they and maybe four or five more. Miss Tuttle—he had not seen her for years out with her basket and trowel, botanizing. She was ninety, and no one saw her often any more. But Ed, the road agent, had told Old Pete not so long ago that he had seen her sitting out on the porch only the other day. When these three women died, the village would lose some quality, some configuration it had had for fifty years. But Pete’s long, quiet pause on the stone wall had not led his wandering mind to any great conclusions about why the village had been dominated by womenfolk. Maybe that’s just the way things are, he thought. Maybe the Lord made them stronger in spirit and gave men the wits.

“Eh, Flicker?”

Flicker pricked his ears.

“As far as I can see, women don’t invent things. They just hold together and keep going what men have invented.”

Way off in the distance he could see a little dust blown up by Nick’s Ford truck. No doubt Ellen had got him to drive Christina home. It didn’t look as if she could easily manage the long hill. And now that this vicarious adventure was over, and Old Pete had watched the two women go off and come back from their walk, he got slowly to his feet. A long sit certainly wasn’t the thing for the rheumatism. And slowly he picked up his ax. He had better keep at it if he was to have his winter woodpile ready in time.

CHRISTINA’S JOURNAL—October 8

Cornelius is asleep, and I want to think a little about my walk with Ellen this morning. Sometimes I think I’m a loon to go on with this journal. I used to pretend that I was keeping it for the grandchildren—in those days, twenty years ago, I still felt that everything I did must have some justification. Now I guess I’ll have to admit that I keep it up for myself. It does for me what prayer must do for the truly religious—sets things in proportion again. It is not important whether it is even read after my death. By then it will have served its purpose.

What is interesting, after all, is the making of a self, an act of creation, like any other, that does imply a certain amount of conscious work. Ellen is very much aware of this, I feel. She would agree with Keats about a “vale of soul-making.” Or would she? “Soul” is not a word she uses, I realize. But she does a lot of thinking about herself.