There are violets out by the front steps, and daffodils and every sort of narcissus in the borders, just glorious. I bring bunches in for Cornelius so he can see the light through the petals. He walked down to the garden where I was working, with the help of two canes, to surprise me yesterday. But I could see the strain when he panted up the hill again. However, he is determined to get about, as he says, now that he has accepted that he may never be able to walk without canes. He says he is in training now. The sheer courage of him! He thinks he’ll be able to drive before summer.

We are all en fête waiting for darling Olivia, who comes on Saturday. Joel is invited for dinner, and Eben—it may be one of Joel’s last times, as I gather he goes back to New Jersey any day now. I am terribly anxious to see what Olivia will think of him, and about this whole affair that seems to be turning Cathy from a child into a young woman with frightening rapidity. Anyway, she looks less pinched and miserable, so I must believe they have come to an understanding.

Ellen is quite torn about Joel, I can feel. She was here yesterday doing her usual quiet, wonderfully calming job of cleaning, and we had quite a talk upstairs in the bedroom, away from Cornelius, who has come to enjoy Ellen’s wit at the coffee hour and looks forward to seeing her. It seems years since she and I have had a chance for a talk … Joel has been a good companion for Nick and has kept him from disappearing, as he so often does, into his strange spells of anxiety and inward-turned anger, and Ellen is grateful for that. Also he is amazingly helpful around the house. “Never saw a man who washed dishes before,” she said with her wry smile. “Couldn’t stand to marry a man who was under foot all the time, but I must admit he’s handy.”

On the other hand she is well aware that Joel, as she says, believes in “people getting together.” “What is touch but a way of saying love?” he told her. “Why be scared of it? The more people we can know the richer we are, and this is one real way of knowing.” Ellen is so wonderful. Apparently she told him that here in Willard we try not to know too much about each other, and that’s what makes it a good place to live in. I gather she greatly enjoys the running fire of her conversations with him. Heaven knows they are both articulate beings! Nick, I imagine, drinks it all in and smiles his secret smile.