“I might visit you myself,” Grandma said, “I’ve always had a hankering for California.”

“I understand the climate cures arthritis,” Mrs. Carmel said. Aunt Lois brushed aside these suggestions.

“Ma, now you know you’d never leave Ohio,” she said. “Why, every time she’s ever been in Indiana or Kentucky, Mr. Sweeney, she is miserable. She can tell the minute we’re on the Ohio state border, and then she perks up. Besides, that kind of a trip takes money, Ma, and this shop doesn’t look to me as if there was that much profit in it.”

Grandma was about to say in some irritation that she could always put her fingers on cash when she needed it, but bethought herself of her daughter’s probable policing of Mr. Sweeney’s checkbook and was silent.

There was a great deal of talk about Papa, Aunt Lois declaring that if he tried to make Lena come back home she would have the law on him for neglect. Grandma said Harry wasn’t to blame, he’d always had hard luck, and whatever had gone wrong was the fault of his wife. Aunt Lois said he had picked his wife with his eyes open, and she could well remember the day poor Daisy died and Harry brought this nurse in saying, “Meet the second Mrs. Willard.” That was the sort of thing you couldn’t forget, with your sister lying on her deathbed and the three children scared out of their wits. She wouldn’t be at all surprised but what the second Mrs. Willard had fixed up the medicine for Daisy just so she could get Harry.

“You mean this Party poisoned her?” Mrs. Carmel exclaimed, beady eyes glowing with pleasure.

“Now, now, Mrs. Sweeney,” Mr. Sweeney remonstrated, shaking a finger fondly at his wife. “Don’t exaggerate.”

Aunt Lois tossed her head sulkily, and compromised by saying Harry could have married lots of girls who would have made lovely mothers, good-hearted, hardworking girls, say, like Bonnie Purdy. Aunt Lois said, much to her nieces’ astonishment, that she never could understand why Papa hadn’t married Bonnie anyway, because Bonnie was fond of the children and was by no means stupid.

“But you always told him not to, Aunt Lois,” Florrie said wide-eyed.

“I may have said something once in a while, but, my goodness, I never tried to run his life one way or another,” Aunt Lois replied. “A real man never takes anybody’s advice anyway, if he has any gumption. No, sir, Harry should have married Bonnie. If he had, the whole family would be better off and Bonnie wouldn’t be in the fix she’s in right now.”

Marcia asked if it was true Lena would go to the new high school, and Mr. Sweeney said naturally, that was the plan. Brooding over this for a few moments, Marcia stated that she personally was going to get a job and make a lot of money maybe, she hinted, not in London Junction either. When Mr. Sweeney benignly asked her what she could do, she said she had learned the touch system at the telegraph office when Vance Hawkins let her use the typewriter. Aunt Lois wanted to know what the touch system was, and Marcia explained it was “not looking at what you’re doing.”