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believed, against all reason and knowledge, that something splendid would suddenly occur.
    “Ask your Mr. Troy to call, if you wish. I may feel up to it next week.”
    Gratified, she goes to church, to pray for me, perhaps, or for herself, or Marvin staring at his epileptic pictures, or just to pray.

Two
    HERE WE
SIT, the little minister straight from the book, bashful and youngly anxious, and I the Egyptian, not dancing now with rowanberries in her hair, but sadly altered. The day is warm and spring, and we are in the back-garden yellow with forsythia. I am struck as always with the shrubs’ early blossoming here, the coast plants still a marvel to me, recalling the late prairie spring and the tenacious snow.
    Mr. Troy has chosen a bad day to call. The rib pain is not so intrusive this afternoon, but my belly growls and snarls like a separate beast. My bowels are locked today. I am Job in reverse, and neither cascara nor syrup of figs nor milk of magnesia will prevail against my unspeakable affliction. I sit uncomfortably. I am bloated, full, weighted down, and I fear I may pass wind.
    Nevertheless, for the minister’s call I have at least put on my gray flowered dress. Silk jersey, Doris calls it. Muted and suitable it is, the flowers miniature and peach-colored, nothing to jar God’s little man. All the same, I quite like the frock myself. It flows in folds around me, and the flowers, sprinkled liberally, almost overcome the gray. Gray isn’t only the hair of the old. Even more, it’s unpainted houses that strain and crack against theweather, leached by rain and bleached by the bone-whitening sun. The Shipley place was never painted, not once. You would think in all that time someone would have had the odd dollar to spare for a few gallons of paint. But no. Bram was always going to do it—in spring, it would be done at harvest, and in fall, it would be done for sure in spring.
    Mr. Troy is trying his level best.
    “A long and full life like yours—it can be counted a blessing—”
    I make no reply. What does he know of it, one way or another? I will not ease his way. Let him flounder.
    “I guess life must have been quite difficult in those days, eh?” he stumbles on.
    “Yes. Yes, it was.” But only because it cannot be otherwise, at whatever time. I do not say this to Mr. Troy, who likes to think that half a century makes all the difference in the world.
    “I guess you grew up on the farm, eh, Mrs. Shipley?”
    Why does he ask? He does not care if I was born on the farm or in the poor house, in Zion or in hell.
    “No. No, I did not, Mr. Troy. I grew up in the town of Manawaka. My father was one of the first people there. The first merchant, he was. His name was Jason Currie. He never farmed, although he owned four farms and had them tenanted.”
    “He must have been a wealthy man.”
    “He was,” I say. “In the goods of this world.”
    “Yes, yes,” says Mr. Troy, voice leaping like a spawning salmon, to show his spirituality. “Wealth can’t be truly measured in dollars and cents.”
    “Two hundred thousand he was worth, at least, and never a red cent of it came to me.”
    “Dear, dear,” says Mr. Troy, not certain what the response should be to that. I will not tell him more. What business is it of his? Yet now I feel that if I were to walk carefully up to my room, approach the mirror softly, take it by surprise, I would see there again that Hagar with the shining hair, the dark-maned colt off to the training ring, the young ladies’ academy in Toronto.
        I wanted to tell Matt I knew he should have been the one to go east, but I could not speak of it to him. I felt I ought to say it to Father, too, but I was terrified he might change his mind about sending me. I said nothing until my trunk was packed and all the arrangements made. Then I spoke.
    “Don’t you think Matt should go to college, Father?”
    “What would he learn that would help him in the store?” Father replied.