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young women giggled) “but I’ll be very happy to tell you anything you want to know about Meadow Grass. Is your daughter between the ages of fourteen and twenty?”
    Ann nodded. “Yes, but I—I don’t know, maybe we could. You see, we’re moving here, moving to Castleview, and I—”
    The three young women shouted in unison, “A townee!”
    “Her name’s Mercedes,” Ann finished weakly, accepting the outstretched hand. “I’m afraid—I really shouldn’t say this—that we named her after the automobile.”
    The three young women attained hysteria.
    “We really shouldn’t have. But that was Willie’s favorite car back then—though it isn’t any more, of course—and the man who named it, named it after his daughter.” She turned to the rider. “You know, I don’t think you and I ever met—properly, I mean. I’m Ann Schindler.”
    He took her hand and nodded. “Wrangler Dunstan, ma’am. I hate to leave so quick, but I ought to get his saddle off Buck and get him bedded down. You want to see our barn, Miss Lisa or one of the girls can show you.”
    When he had gone out, Lisa Solomon smiled. “You’ll have to excuse Wrangler—he’s terribly shy. Won’t you sit down?”
    Ann nodded. “Over by the fire, if that’s all right with you.”
    “Certainly. Do you know, I read just today that open fires don’t actually heat a building? It seems they draw in more cold
air than they warm; just think of all those ignorant people who froze themselves to death, and never realized it, for thousands of years. Would you like something hot? We don’t allow alcohol, but one of the girls could make tea or cocoa.”
    “Tea, please.”
    They were crowding around. The blonde said, “I’m Sissy—I’ll do it.”
    “And this is Lucie d’Carabas. Lucie’s from France.”
    “Normandie,” a raven-haired young woman sketched a curtsy.
    “And Sancha Balanka, from Rio.”
    The darkest of the three smiled shyly.
    “Sissy’s from Cleveland,” Lisa added. “Her name’s really Cecilia Stevenson.”
    Ann said, “I’m not sure I understand. If you’re closed—”
    Sancha told her softly, “My parents are in Europe, you see. They are delayed. They—”
    From the other end of the room, Sissy called, “Nobody wants us, Mrs. Schindler. So since we haven’t got anyplace to go, we stay here.”
    Lisa said, “That’s not true, Sissy,” in the tone of one who has repeated the same words many times. To Ann she explained, “These are girls whose parents haven’t been able to come for them yet. We—Wrangler and I—live here year-round, so we’re in loco parentis.”
    Sissy added, “For extra money. I put the kettle on. Tea and cheesecake in half a minute.”
    “Thank you.” Ann dropped into the leather armchair behind her. “Won’t all of you sit down?”
    Lisa pulled up another leather chair for herself. “That’s right, for extra money—which we need quite badly. You didn’t really come to talk about sending Mercedes here next summer, did you?”
    Ann shook her head.
    “But conceivably you will, so I may as well be honest with you. We’re underfinanced, and we’ve had problems this year.”
    Sancha muttered something evil-sounding under her breath.
    “Two horses have been killed, and now somebody’s sabotaged our jeep. It’s hoodlums from town, I suppose.”
    Ann said, “So that’s why he was out at night with a gun.”
    “Yes. Things seem to happen in bad weather, mostly. That doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s the way it’s been. Lately Wrangler hardly sleeps at all when the weather’s nasty.”
    “Wrangler’s not his real name, is it?” Ann asked.
    The young women giggled, and the older young woman looked at them with such humorless severity that Ann realized she was hardly more than a girl herself. “No. It’s a perfectly nice, perfectly beautiful name, but for some reason he’s embarrassed by it, so we call him Wrangler. I could tell you what his real name is, but the