“Good heavens,” Christina murmured, “how hard it is to imagine oneself back in time—a little over a hundred years ago and the stark poverty of that school!” She gave a grim smile. “Jem would say that’s how they made men, I suppose.”

“Learning by rote from ignorant teachers.”

“Yet boys did go on to Exeter and Dartmouth—even Harvard. And some girls got to seminaries, I expect. I’m always amazed at how many lawyers came out of this town.”

But this did not surprise Ellen. “We’re born and raised feuding and squabbling and going to law about fences, dogs, road agents, heaven knows! I sometimes think we keep alive by fighting in this town. There’s nothing much else to do in winter.”

Christina smiled and listened, for Ellen was looking out at the mountain, and she clearly had more on her mind to say.

“It’s different up here,” she sighed.

“How?”

“I always have noticed it up here—more space—the mountain—you go to Europe and come back.”

“Yes,” Christina said, “we can move around, I suppose—” but she was shy of this subject. It made her feel sad and oppressed to think of all that she had. Sad, too, that years ago when they were young girls, before she went off to college, she had imagined taking Ellen to Europe with her. Then life had swept them off on its strong tides, Ellen into marriage with her inferior, Christina into Boston society, into a whole other world. However dear they were to each other—and heaven knows they had shared a lot of grief over the years—there were barriers that even love could not cross.

Ellen had been thinking her own thoughts. “I can see Rufus now, chewing his cud of rage, sitting cramped up in the winter, not enough to do outdoors, building up a grudge against someone until he felt he had to go to law about it.”

“I wonder what made him such a punishing man. It was hard on you, Ellen. I know it was.” Christina reached over and wanted to take Ellen’s hand in hers, but she couldn’t do it. Pride held Ellen together, and pride forbade a certain kind of warmth that came easy to Christina.

“No fool like an unyielding woman, and I wouldn’t yield.” She frowned. “A lot of it was my own fault, Christina. I see that now.”

“It sometimes seems to me we learn everything too late, so what the hell’s the use of it?” Christina said passionately.

“Nick thinks about his father a lot. Seems as if Rufus had grown in Nick’s mind and kind of towers there now. It’s strange.”

But this was more than Ellen had meant to say and she got up. “Must get back and get that boy’s dinner.”