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I’m not sure. But he told me he’s doubled his money in the stock market.”
    I felt ornery enough to want to rake her a little. “You haven’t said how old he is.”
    Loma hedged. “Wasn’t Pa fifty-nine when he married Miss Love? I’d say Mr. Vitch is a little older than that. Maybe two or three years older.”
    I started to ask if it was more like five years or ten or maybe twenty, but I chanced to look over at Mama. She couldn’t stand it when conversation got tense at the table—or anywhere else, for that matter.
    Mary Toy spoke up. “Aunt Loma whistled at church this morning, Will. It was just beautiful!”
    Loma blushed with pleasure. As if suddenly realizing Mary Toy was somebody she cared about, she asked, “What are you majoring in, honey?”
    â€œLatin.”
    â€œLatin? I majored in elocution and it’s gotten me all the way to the New York stage. But, Lord, what in the world can you do with Latin?”
    Papa, about to bite into the pulley bone, waved it in protest. “Mary Toy’s go’n teach Latin, Loma. That’s what.”
    For a few minutes everybody just ate. I found myself staring at my blue-eyed, auburn-haired sister. She was flowering at college. Her face was plain, like Mama’s, but radiant in a special way. She and I liked each other.
    I glanced then from Mama at one end of the table to Papa at the other, noticing with surprise, as if I hadn’t been around lately, that Mama looked several years older than Miss Love, though they were the same age, and that Papa, at forty-eight, had gone from stocky to portly. Most prosperous middle-aged men got portly, as if it took a protruding stomach to show off a gold watch fob.
    The store had survived the depression of 1914. When farmers made money, the store did too and the war had sent cotton prices soaring, easing Papa’s worries. He’d started talking about buying the farm in Banks County from his father and giving it to me.
    Papa still didn’t have a sense of humor. People said if Mr. Hoyt heard something funny in the morning, it was night before he laughed. I knew he was a good man though, except for that one never-mentioned event that hung in the air at home. I wished he’d talk about it to me so I could tell him I didn’t really hold it against him. Well, maybe he knew I didn’t. We had got a lot closer since Grandpa Blakeslee died. When I was a boy I never noticed how Papa doted on me. I was too busy doting on Grandpa, despite Papa was always saying I made him proud.
    What hung in the air right now was the family’s unspoken objection to Mr. Vitch. Campbell Junior’s fork screeched across his plate, Mama set her tea glass in its coaster, Mary Toy fiddled with her napkin ring. The loudness of these small sounds was finally interrupted by Loma’s voice.
    She didn’t start off talking loud, just tight and bitter. “Y’all don’t want Campbell Junior to get the education he deserves, do you? Here he’s got a chance to go to a fine boarding school and you want to keep him stuck in P.C.—a backward town if I ever saw one.”
    Papa was indignant. Speaking as president of the school board, he said, “For Pete’s sake, Loma, Campbell Junior cain’t get a better education anywhere than right here. Mary Toy, pass the sugar. Chi’ren are lucky who grow up in a small town.”
    Loma snapped back at him, “You’re the epitome of small town, Brother Hoyt. You think the city limits of P.C. are the boundary of the world. Even Atlanta”—she sputtered—“to you Atlanta is just the Southeastern Fair every fall. And you think New York is on the other side of the moon.”
    â€œI’ve been to New York City, you know. How you think we’d stock the store if I didn’t go up there? But I tell you one thing, young lady. Anybody who’d deliberately go live in New York City