“Don’t ask me, child. But if you’ll take a good hard look around you in this village, that you and Joel see as some sort of paradise, you’ll see more’n one marriage not made in heaven but right here on earth where two innocents got caught. And some of those marriages go on for fifty years, all wrong, paying for some girl’s letting herself get pushed. Times may change, and fashions, but human biology remains pretty much the same, as far as I can see. So we still have to deal with it, even though sex is no longer a dirty word.”

“But … but …” Cathy felt miserable. This was why you couldn’t talk with grown-ups—they made it all seem horrible. “… why isn’t it good for two people to be wholly together if they love each other wholly?”

“It is good … could be, I guess. Don’t ask me.” And Ellen picked up her sewing as if to close the subject.

Cathy observed her and was silent. There just didn’t seem to be anybody who could help. It was hard to imagine Ellen and her husband having the slightest resemblance to herself and Joel. Maybe it was just that each pair of lovers had a great secret which couldn’t be talked about or shared, the entity they were together, without words.

She jumped up as she heard a car drive in, but it was only Mr. Grindell, who got out of his station wagon and came to the door carrying a long thin sign in his arms.

“Well, if it isn’t Jem with the marker! Lord sakes!” And Ellen ran to the door.

Jem was beaming with the pleasure of at last having got to the action after all the meetings and talk.

“Here,” he said. “Like it?”

And Ellen read: “Dr. Reginald Foster, 1803–1877.”

“I expect Dr. Foster would be pleased,” she said dryly. “I feel kind of shy about being labeled.”

“Come now! This is a house of the greatest historical interest—one of the oldest in the village, you know.”

“It’s come down in the world, hasn’t it?”

“Not at all, not at all. Rufus Comstock was a yeoman farmer in the great tradition. The village honors his name. Only these markers—they are to show original sites.”

You just couldn’t tease Jem, he was too pleased, and he had worked hard.

So far he had been too full of his errand to notice Cathy. But now he saw her and greeted her warmly.

“I understand you are hibernating in Willard,” he said jovially. “I’ll be up to see your grandfather shortly.”