“Well—”

“I dont like rattling around in this house. Hit’s big enough for all of Scary Creek to live in. You want somebody in here with you, git married and have a passel of younguns. But I want me a place of my own.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then I’ll go somewheres else. They’s a need for nurses anywhere I choose to go. I might go to New Orleans or New York. Or Paris, France or Peking, China. You dont know where I might run off to.”

There was nothing he could say to that, and I got my two rooms on the back corner of the second floor beside the fire escape. They had high ceilings, long narrow windows, rich oak floors and walls of gray wainscoting. I hung green and blue curtains, bought a green bedspread and blue rugs. I also purchased a gray metal electric lamp from the company store, and painted pink flowers around the base. These were the first things I had bought with my own money, and I was very proud.

Still I ate supper with Miles, and sometimes stayed the night. It was a comfort, from time to time, to sleep under the same roof as kinfolks. Miles was usually pleasant company. He was happy with his work, but lonesome. He had been in love at Berea, but never heard from the girl after he graduated. Clary Leach, back on Scary Creek, was out of the question, he said.

“They aint nothing wrong with Clary,” I said.

“Aw, what would she do with a big house like this?”

“Same as you do. Look silly.”

“Come on, Carrie. She’s not educated.”

“That dont mean she’s stupid. If you’re gitting uppity, go on up to Boston and marry one of your old rich boss’s daughters.”

“You know what? I’ve been thinking of going to that Episcopal church in Justice. Those are good people to socialize with.”

I went with him once. The building was solid stone and stained glass with red doors, just like the churches in Wuthering Heights. I loved to walk by it when I was in school. But during the service, I got tired of standing when everybody else stood, and kneeling when they knelt, and looking up prayers in a book.

“God could bung them people over the head and they wouldnt know who done it,” I said. “They’d have to look it up.”

“I like it,” he said. “It’s a dignified service.”

Miles worked hard at being dignified. He never went outside the house without his hat, tie and starched collar. He had been to Boston, he said, and seen how they lived. He said it the way other people describe their religious experiences. Every Friday he sat at his desk and wrote to the mine owners; every Monday he went eagerly to the post office to receive their letter to him. In June he made his second pilgrimage to New England. I helped him pack and saw him off at the train station. He waved to me through the dusty glass window, his face bright and eager as a child’s.