Cornelius and Christina exchanged a look, quickly subdued. Mrs. Simmons’s prayers had sometimes been a little hard to take, as when the small library in memory of Miss Portland had been dedicated. Miss Portland had been an artist, an original and powerful person, but she smoked at a time when smoking by a woman, especially the smoking of elegant, long Manila cigars, was not quite the thing. Mrs. Simmons had prayed aloud that “this beautiful memorial be unsullied by any vice, and that it contain only books of an edifying nature.” Cornelius himself had been the chief speaker on that occasion, and had not been able to resist a mild joke about how phoenixes did, it would seem, arise from ashes, and he devoutly hoped the village would still contain at least one phoenix and a little smoke.

“We have to take people as they are,” Miss Plummer remarked. “Don’t you think a village like this is a remarkable achievement of just that? We all have bees in our bonnets, I suspect. But what keeps everything on the boil around here is the idiosyncratic character.” For once she was speaking in a normal voice. They were beginning to see the real, the sensitive person under the armor. “We have to be tolerant, I guess.” She turned to Cornelius earnestly. “There’s always some grudge building up, you know, especially in winter. Seems like people have to keep going, and anger is no doubt good for the circulation.” She gave her sudden loud laugh. “I have my eye on Nick,” she said. “He’s going to come to a boil one of these days, the way he cares about the wildlife around here.”

“He already has, hasn’t he?” Cornelius asked.

“Oh, yes, that affair of the New Yorkers and the poor doe—well, …”—she realized she was treading on thin ice—“he’s all het up now about a mountain lion on the old Sumner hill. Thinks someone will kill it.”

“Those lions used to be a real threat,” Cornelius mused. “I can remember when one decimated the Love-land lambs—years ago—traditional enemies.”

“Men like to kill,” said Miss Plummer with some bitterness.

“Maybe it’s in their blood,” Cornelius teased. “Men are brutes, Miss Plummer.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” She withdrew, blushing. “You’re baiting me, Mr. Chapman.”

“Every small boy in the world at some stage pulls the legs off flies.”

“And it’s usually to dazzle some little girl, I expect,” Miss Plummer said. “The human animal leaves much to be desired.”

“But in a village like Willard we can somehow absorb more of the Old Harry than they can in cities—is that it?”

“I wonder …” Miss Plummer chewed reflectively. “There’s more space to be wild in. A boy can go out hunting instead of breaking into a school and throwing ink around.”

“Do they read at all?” Christina asked.