“Oh,” she said, sitting on the steps in the hall to take off her boots, “we are so grateful for Nick’s help. He’s an angel.”

“Good for him to do some work. Heard him whistling this morning when he got up.”

“I just ran away, I was dying to see you.”

“I sort of hoped you might drop in.”

Christina noted at once that sewing had been put aside and books and papers laid out on the table.

“You’re working for Jem, I bet.”

“Well, it haunts my mind that there is a job to do. Wake up at night thinking about how it seems as if we more or less educated ourselves in villages like this.”

Christina was wandering around the room, taking in, like a charm, the smell of coffee and a stew or something on the stove, the warmth and dearness of the shabby old kitchen, the cat under the table, paws tucked in.

“Sit down. I’ll pour a cup of coffee. Made blueberry muffins.”

“I’m just happy to be here,” Christina said, finally sinking into the rocker with a sigh. “Winter is wonderful.”

“It’s early anyway—wonderful, I can’t say. Seems like we get closed in.”

“But it’s so beautiful!”

“Hard on the birds,” Ellen said, crumbling up a muffin and throwing it out the back door. “Nick worries about them, says an early storm like this kills hundreds—I don’t know.”

“Tell me about the schools. Have you started to write?”

“Wish I could talk it out. I’m no writer. Those sentences run through my head at night—then in the morning, I can’t catch them. Seems like when I sit down with a pencil I haven’t a notion what I meant to say.”

“But you’re way ahead of me. I have to get up to Eben’s somehow and go over letters he found. You know, his great-grandmother took in half the village during the Civil War. It should be interesting.”

“Dropped in here the other day just before the snow. Must be snowed in up there today still. He talked about you.”

Christina drank a sip of coffee and waited. Ellen knew as much as anyone about Eben and herself. But as Ellen did not volunteer more than this, she spoke.

“He’s lonely, I expect.”

“Never have been able to fathom him. He keeps himself to himself, then he turns up and talks my head off—just like a bottle of pop that fizzes up.”

“Talk about the schools,” Christina said, accepting a muffin.

“They weren’t good enough—how could they afford good enough teachers? Once in a while a genius like Miss Morse came along, but after that we had Ben Torrey and hardly learned a thing.”

“Why not?”