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EVERYBODY IN LONDON JUNCTION talked about the second Mrs. Willard’s trousseau, and several ladies had even paid formal calls for the express purpose of examining it. There was her off-white satin wedding dress with the short, pearl-sequined veil, her fawn-colored broadcloth traveling suit trimmed in brown soutache, with a peg-top skirt, brown horsehair toque and gloves to match, her purple taffeta petticoat and umbrella, her peach-colored crepe de chine party dress with beaded panel down the front and baby blue velvet forget-me-nots appliqued around the flounce, and her big horsehair picture hat weighted with huge roses. For every day she had the clothes left over from her mourning period for the late Dr. Turner. Her early weeks in London Junction were marked by magic transformations from mousy little grub by morning into radiant butterfly by dusk, radiance graded to suit whatever occasion was on hand. Papa strutted when he escorted this fashionable figure down Main Street on Saturday nights to the picture show or on Sundays to the First Methodist Church, wheeling little Minelda May in the very latest go-cart from the Store. Marcia, Lena, and Florrie followed at an admiring distance, proud of the stares at their new mother’s city dresses, and shocked to hear later that their own shabbiness was as much a subject of comment as their stepmother’s elegance.

It was like a dream to walk home from school straight up the Furness front walk. After a while Mrs. Willard ruled that they were to use the back alley and back door, because they tracked up the new broadloom carpet. Their first rapture over the change in their fortunes was not easily quenched. It was true that the Furness place, after years of neglect, was no longer the showplace of London Junction, but it was still to them the fairy-tale castle it had been when Papa first promised it to Mama, and they had played there, pretending to own it. It was far too big to refurnish, so several rooms were shut up. The three girls used one big bedroom, with a cot in the alcove for Florrie. Their new mother said that girls’ rooms shouldn’t be cluttered up with a lot of junk, so, to tell the truth, it looked more bleak than the house’s exterior grandeur would indicate. Downstairs, the big parlor was decorated with the very latest in furniture, rugs, and drapes from the Store (payment deducted from Papa’s salary for the next thirty months), with a grand piano in the middle of the room. A purple plush scarf, with gold roses painted upon it, added a royal richness to the piano, crowned in addition by a funereal-looking amphora of gilded wheat. The piano was queen of the parlor, with two bright blue plush chairs, overstuffed and tasseled, as its duchesses. These were placed before the fireplace (made up-to-date with artificial gas logs) and their dignity enhanced by a stiff hand-embroidered sofa cushion laid against each right foreleg. A vast blue davenport between the chairs was so rigidly overstuffed that its cushions popped up waist high. The parlor seemed made not for living inhabitants but for these regal pieces of furniture which frowned at any violation of their lofty privacy and brooked no touch but the reverent dusting ministrations of their priestess, Mrs. Willard.