It had all begun like a fanfare of trumpets—pure air, delicious snow, and the changed world, but when the second big snow fell before the first one had melted, and then a series of lead-gray, bitter-cold days and high wind made the windows rattle and the house creak like a ship, Christina’s joy gave way to a feeling of anxiety. She begged Nick to try to get hold of Old Pete, but Old Pete, it seemed, was not feeling well. His hernia was bothering him, and he spent the days keeping himself warm and drinking with anyone who would get him a six-pack from the store.

Finally, at Cornelius’s suggestion, she drove up past Eben’s to the Lovelands’ farm to see if one of that clan of hard workers would be willing to get at the storm windows and storm doors, flx a leak in the attic roof, and perhaps also clean the house. John had promised to come up before Christmas to see Jane and to help out. All the children had telephoned or written, so the slight sense of fear Christina had experienced, “the wind at my back” as she described it, had gone for the moment.

She went in to kiss Cornelius good-by. He was drawing up a plan of Sophia’s farm, listing the animals and all the facts he could glean from the packet of letters, in his small methodical hand. It was really a great piece of luck to have a task like this to keep him amused. When Christina bent to kiss the top of his head, he hardly noticed, he was so absorbed. “Pigs,” he murmured. Then as she turned to go, he admonished her to drive carefully. “Go up the steep hill in first!”

“Yes, darling.”

They were entering a new phase, for Cornelius, who had been so patient, letting her make decisions, never cross even for a second, was now getting to the point where his awkwardness had become a constant irritation. Christina told herself that this was a sign that he was on the mend, but she hated being ordered around, and it seemed for the moment that his recovered sense of himself was taking the form of his treating her like a rather feeble-minded child.

“You’ll freeze to death in that jacket. For God’s sake, have some sense—wear your fur coat.”

But Christina didn’t want to wear a fur coat to the Lovelands’. She slipped out in a ski parka without being seen.