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Harlow compromised with him in that he could go out in the wagon for a single visit if another member of the household transported him. The doctor left Orchard Rest in a huff, muttering about how the boy would kill himself yet with his own stupidity and brazenness.
    Thomas told Joseph he wasn’t sparing a single servant for the afternoon so that he could go courting, so Joseph asked Somerset to take him. Ordinarily she would have been curious to be so near Joseph and Fairlee during their first reunion in years, but when she agreed she wondered if it would cut into time that she could be spending with Sawyer.
    Somerset stood before the mirror in the front parlor with the flattering light filtering in through the window upon her upturned face. She turned her bonnet from side to side and fluffed and retied the bow scores of times in an effort to beautify it. It was shabby and shapeless, and she wished that her closet contained more than work dresses and a couple of ball gowns that couldn’t be worn on a visit out in the country. Fairlee was a comely dresser, or had been, so Somerset wanted to look presentable.
    “I wish we were rich again!” she grumbled as the bow fell limp in her hands for the hundredth time.
    “Somerset!” exclaimed Victoria, coming into the parlor with an armload of starched linens.
    “Don’t give me that look. We all look like we belong on the streets in a Dickens novel. I can’t believe I agreed to take him to see Fairlee when my closet is all threadbare cotton.”
    “Take comfort in the fact that Joseph will look as shabby as you, and Fairlee likely will.”
    Somerset laughed, taking pleasure in her little sister’s practical outlook.
    “Besides, I wish I were going,” continued Victoria. “It will be like having a front row seat at a play.”
    “I wish you would go with us.”
    “I was never friends with Fairlee. She won’t be expecting me.”
    “You’re grown now so she might like your company. She won’t be expecting anyone today since she just got home. Your presence will lend grace to an undignified situation.”
    “What undignified situation?” Blanche asked.
    She appeared at the door carrying her poultry ledger with Warren following her like a brown puppy, adoration on his face. Somerset thought Blanche was omniscient. She materialized at the first portent of trouble.
    “Miss Buchanan must be home,” surmised Blanche, “and knowing Joseph, she hasn’t had time to put her valise down but he insists on calling on her.”
    Somerset nodded.
    “The train arrived this morning, Mother, and I doubt she’s been at home for more than a couple hours.”
    “I can’t imagine what Evelyn will think of this household when a legion of my children appears on her front porch with no advance notice,” mused Blanche.
    “Shall we refuse to take him before tomorrow then?” asked Victoria. She sounded disappointed. She seldom left Orchard Rest, but she could tell by the stately incline of her mother’s head that she was close to forbidding them to go.
    “Oh, goodness no,” said Blanche. “I’d rather abandon all propriety with Evelyn than have Joseph lounge about on the porch for another day. He was calling down to passersby on the road yesterday. I won’t have it another day.”
    “I’m having Franklin hitch Hector to the wagon,” said Somerset. “We’re leaving just as soon as Jim finishes dressing Joseph.”
    “Good,” nodded Blanche. “Don’t go empty-handed. Victoria, take some of the preserves you put up this week so Evelyn thinks we’re less barbaric than we actually are. Somerset, don’t leave the two of them alone together no matter what—I don’t care who else is there chaperoning. Keep up with the time, Victoria. I know he’s looked forward to nothing else, but I want you all back by suppertime. It’s bad enough that Fairlee just got home, I won’t have Joseph camped out at the Loft until asked to leave.”
    “I go. I go, too!” asserted Warren, removing