“Wenham ice, from your home state of Massachusetts. I suppose, if there’s war, there’ll be no more Wenham ice and we shall have to suffer the local product. But Doctor Danson says the ice might cure Mother’s neuralgia. The ice cure comes from Europe, so it must be good.” Starbuck had never heard of neuralgia, and did not want to enquire into its nature in case it should prove to be one of the vague and indescribable feminine diseases that so often prostrated his mother and elder sister, but Anna volunteered that the affliction was a very modern one and was constituted by what she described as “facial headaches.” Starbuck murmured his sympathy. “But Father thinks she makes it up to annoy him,” Anna continued in her timid and attenuated voice.

“I’m sure that can’t be true,” Starbuck said.

“I think it might,” Anna said in a very sad voice. “I sometimes wonder if men and women always irritate each other?”

“I don’t know.”

“This isn’t a very cheerful conversation, is it?” Anna asked rather despairingly and in a tone that suggested all her conversations became similarly bogged down in melancholy. She seemed to sink further into despair with every second, and Starbuck was remembering Belvedere Delaney’s malicious tales of how intensely his half-brother disliked this girl, but how badly Ridley needed her dowry. Starbuck hoped those tales were nothing more than malicious gossip, for it would be a cruel world, he thought, that could victimize a girl as fey and tremulous as Anna Faulconer. “Did Father really say the petticoats were for me?” she suddenly asked.

“Your uncle said as much.”

“Oh, Pecker,” Anna said, as if that explained everything.

“It seemed a very strange request,” Starbuck said gallantly.

“So much is strange these days,” Anna said hopelessly, “and I daren’t ask Father for an explanation. He isn’t happy, you see.”

“No?”

“It’s poor Ethan’s fault. He couldn’t find Truslow, you see, and Father has set his heart on recruiting Truslow. Have you heard about Truslow?”

“Your uncle told me about him, yes. He made Truslow sound rather fearful.”

“But he is fearful. He’s frightful!” Anna stopped to look up into Starbuck’s face. “Shall I confide in you?”

Starbuck wondered what new horror story he was about to hear of the dreaded Truslow. “I should be honored by your confidence, Miss Faulconer,” he said very formally.

“Call me Anna, please. I want to be friends. And I tell you, secretly, of course, that I don’t believe poor Ethan went anywhere near Truslow’s lair. I think Ethan is much too frightened of Truslow. Everyone’s frightened of Truslow, even Father, though he says he isn’t.” Anna’s soft voice was very portentous. “Ethan says he went up there, but I don’t know if that’s true.”

“I’m sure it is.”