“You mean she’s in love, but can’t marry him?” Cathy said with evident alarm. Somehow it seemed important that Aunt Olivia not be in love. The reason Cathy could accept her grandparents was, she knew in her heart very well, because sex was somehow not the point. The very word “sex” made Cathy terribly uncomfortable. She couldn’t say it without blushing, and one of the reasons she hated school in Boston was that the girls in her class seemed so sophisticated and aware about things that just made her blush and the palms of her hands sweat.

“It’s none of my business or yours,” Ellen said firmly. “All I mean is that we know very little about each other really. Your Aunt Olivia is a splendid woman, I can tell you that.”

Nick came to the door then in his outdoor boots and stood there waiting.

“I’m about ready if you are,” he said.

“You’re going anyway?” Cathy asked. “I can walk.”

“About time the woodboxes got filled.”

She climbed up into the truck and off they went, and never said one word the whole way. But neither of them noticed the silence. Cathy was thinking hard, and Nick was used to silence. That was the thing about Willard, Cathy said to herself—you could be what you felt. Nobody minded. Besides, she was sure that Nick was a saint on earth, and she hadn’t an idea how to approach a saint.

CHRISTINA’S JOURNAL—April 11

I suppose this is mud season—a long-drawn-out, colorless, wet, gloomy waiting for spring to come. We snatch at every smallest sign that it is on the way—somewhere down in the Carolinas, no doubt. The willow branches are turning a brighter yellow. Cathy came in the other day, her eyes shining, with a bunch of pussywillows for Cornelius. The skies are water color—by which I mean, I suppose, softer than the brilliant skies of winter. And we have had some great sunsets after rain—I drink in the crimson and orange and those pale green reaches above the clouds, as if color were a needed vitamin. But too often Cornelius and I wake to a wall of fog—the mountain is elusive these days. Driving is hazardous—I wouldn’t dare drive up to the Lovelands’ or to Eben’s, and even he has twice stuck fast in mud in his jeep, and once walked down here to call for a wrecker to haul him out.

My garden is still under snow, although here and there a patch of black wet earth shows, or dank grass—it seems impossible that it will ever turn green and dry out around here. Only the brooks give us hope—and we can hear the roar of ours even inside the house at times.