“He’s a strange critter—reminds me sometimes of a sled dog—those pale blue eyes, mild and dangerous.”

“Ellen worries.”

“Ellen would worry if she were in heaven with God’s hand on her shoulder. Worrying keeps her alive.”

“You’re cruel, Eben.”

“No, just realistic in my old age.”

They passed several cars, and each time Eben lifted a hand from the wheel in salute. It was one of the things winter had brought to Christina—the pleasure of being greeted by everyone, for everyone recognized you. Now they had come out onto the school road that followed a winding brook all the way down to town.

Reveling in the sound of water, the rush and roar as the snow-rich brook tumbled down past rocks and blocks of ice, a thundering, joyous aliveness, Christina said, “That’s the only sign of spring, yet it is March twenty-first.”

“Looking forward to the change?”

“If you mean the weather, yes.”

“I meant Cathy.”

“Oh, Eben, I don’t know.” But for some reason she didn’t feel like talking about Cathy. “Do you think you are more realistic now—whatever that really means?”

“Maybe all I mean is that I am more able to accept people as they are, to accept—maybe—that their faults go to make them what they are. I’m eager to see this little person and what she is like. The only trouble with Willard—our Willard anyway—is that it is composed of the elderly. Good for us, don’t you think, to be stirred up again by someone young enough to be in revolt?—for I gather that is what she is.”

“She wears dreadful clothes—her skirts are halfway up her thighs and she hasn’t the legs for that. Her hair falls down straight over her face as if she were an English sheep dog. She is doing very badly at school. She loves animals passionately, and plays the guitar really quite well, and sings in a strange piping voice that, for some reason, catches my heart in an absurd way. She writes poems.… I just can’t imagine what it’s going to be like, Eben. I’m scared, I guess.”

“You don’t really like women, do you?” It was a typical thrust from Eben. He liked to make Christina rise.

“Don’t I? Olivia and I have always been very close, it seems to me.” Then for a moment Christina thought this statement over. “I guess you’re right. Olivia is more like a man really. Women are so damned personal, Eben, and girls are always worrying about how they look.”

“Well, Cathy doesn’t seem to err in that direction.”

“She’s wild and elusive and doesn’t know what she wants.”

“She wanted to come here.”