But Fred’s favourite goal was the country store in Stonefield Centre, with its back door opening on forty acres of pasture and sugar maples. Amid the overalls, slabs of dried codfish, patent medicines, and country-auction posters, Hazel and he sat on boxes and listened to the storekeeper’s libellous stories about Judge Basser, down the road, of whose housekeeper, who had been with him for twenty-seven years now, people were beginning to suspect the worst.

When they had left this refuge, scented with the molasses sweetness of chewing tobacco, dusty and quiet and serene, Hazel sighed, ‘I like going there. Oh dear, I don’t suppose there’ll be any old-fashioned stores left in ten years — just glass and air-conditioning and telephone.’

‘I thought you were the one that liked all these modern improvements — electric kitchens,’ he jeered.

‘Well, that’s different,’ she answered in her adequate, wifely way.

Their house in Sachem, he perceived, no longer belonged to them except by the artificial convention of deeds and lawbooks. It belonged to Sara, to Howard, to Annabel, to their friends, to the telephone company and the gas-furnace man and the meter reader, to their maid, and to their maid’s sister, sister-inlaw, and sister-inlaw’s sister’s son and his large red toy automobile. But William Tyler Longwhale was theirs alone.

Hazel had so zealously taken to housekeeping that she wanted to prepare not only breakfast but lunch and dinner. He caught her just in time to keep her from putting on the hair shirt of domestic discipline. ‘That’s why we ran away, to avoid fussing.’

‘Well, I just thought I’d fix up a bit for lunch — just some cold meat — no real cooking.’

‘I see. Just cold meat. And a little soup, maybe?’

‘Oh yes, I thought I might make a little hot soup . . .’

‘And a couple hot vegetables?’

‘No, only one. Honestly. Just some nice peas.’

‘And hot potatoes, of course.’

‘Oh, of course, POTATOES!’

‘How about dessert?’

‘Oh, a tiny bit of prune whip — so light — nothing to make . . .’

‘You know, Hazel, you read where women are so much more dependable about bringing up kids and caring for property than men. Fact is, women over-elaborate everything and make life twice as complicated as any normal man ever would, and then they kick because the men don’t jump in and kill themselves taking care of things they never wanted in the first place. You can bet no male ever invented dancing schools for children, or lace collars, or sweet little bows to parents, or eating with forks, or saying “please” and “thank you”. No man ever invented perfume or round flower beds or service plates or doilies or velvet upholstery or dress suits and boiled shirts — and if some tailor invented ’em, well, he didn’t do it; his wife did!’

‘In other words, women have been trying to make life a little pleasant and civilized, while men prefer to live in mud dug-outs and never wash,’ said Hazel, firmly, as she started to make the prune whip.