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paper and laying it aside to salt and pepper his eggs.
    “At one of the stables around town.”
    “None of them have their own paddock. You’d have to go out every day to exercise the horse, and you don’t even know how to ride.”
    “I can learn.”
    “Alyson, I think it is much too dangerous for you to own that horse,” Eleanor interjected, her ivory brow peevishly creased from the grievances of the morning. “This is just a whim of yours that will cause no end of inconvenience. Once the novelty of owning that horse wears off, you’ll wind up selling him anyway. Who will look after him when you go to college?”
    “Mother, how many times must I tell you? I’m not going to college.”
    Lorne, seeing his wife’s feathers about to ruffle, took the subject back to Sampson. “Have you any idea what kind of time is involved in caring for a horse? You’ll have to check on him daily, make sure he’s being fed and watered properly. You’ll have to exercise and groom him. I’m just stating the concerns that will be bothering Marshall. Even if you weren’t a Kingston, he might not want to sell Sampson to you. He will probably prefer to see the horse left with someone like Matt Taylor, who has a financial interest in taking care of him, even if Marshall has to sell him for less than the generous offer I’m sure you’ll make him.”
    “How much of a generous offer?” Lorne Junior wanted to know.
    Aly, ignoring the question, got up and threw down her napkin in a childish gesture, which she realized would not help her cause. But it was all just so overwhelming—Willy leaving, her family’s attitude, and the foreclosure of the most wonderful place on earth. “I’m buying Sampson,” she declared, her bottom lip trembling. “Nobody could take better care of him than I will. I’ll find a place to stable him, just don’t you worry.”
    “Well,” said her father serenely, “I believe I’ll just wait to hear that Marshall will sell you Sampson before I draw up any papers. And when you get out to the Waynes’ this morning,” he added as she headed for the door, “tell Willy that he can expect no reference from me to find another job.”
    Aly stopped short and turned back to stare at her father. She opened her mouth to say something, then clamped it shut. What was the use? Fairness was asking too much of a Kingston.
    On the way out to the farm, vestiges of the dream from which she’d been awakened still clung, provoking poignant memories not so long past. Aly recalled the first time she had ever seen Cedar Hill. She had been six years old, sitting in the backseat of the family Cadillac with Willy at the wheel. In a town of fifteen thousand, Aly and Victoria had the distinction of being the only children driven to and from school by a chauffeur, a fact made indisputably clear by the black-billed hat Eleanor insisted Willy wear on such occasions.
    One Thursday when Victoria had chosen to ride home with Lorne Junior, then a sophomore with his first car, Willy turned left out of the school parking lot rather than right.
    “Where we going, Willy?”
    “Out to Cedar Hill. Your mother wants me to deliver the wash and pick up the ironing every Thursday after school from now on because of the gas shortage.”
    “The farm where Marshall Wayne lives?”
    “Uh-huh. You know him?”
    “Just by sight. He’s a fifth grader.”
    But she knew who he was, all right. Everybody did, and all her friends and even her sister, who was also in the fifth grade, had a crush on him. At ten years old, Marshall was the best-looking boy in elementary school and the quarterback of the pee wee football team. That he kept to himself and rarely smiled—Victoria called him stuck up—didn’t seem to detract from his popularity. Aly kept waiting for him to notice her beautiful sister, but he never did. As she and Willy drove out to the Wayne farm that day, she wondered how long it would take Victoria to snag him.
    It had been the first of