Well, she certainly had a point there. It wasn’t easy remembering you were an august personage.

She lowered the envelope she was opening. “What do you mean, normally you’d have no doubt?”

“Frieda,” he said, “Miranda’s arranged the meeting for Whitebark Lodge.”

“Whitebark Lodge!” Her expression was pained. “What an absolutely rotten idea. What on earth was she thinking of?”

“Well, you have to remember, Miranda wasn’t there the night that…well, the night of the party. No guilty memories for her.”

“I hardly think guilt is the right word, Nellie. How could any of you even dream how it was going to turn out? You can’t hold yourselves responsible for Albert Evan Jasper’s-for what happened to him.”

As she spoke he nodded along with her, drawing on his pipe. “I know, Frieda, I know.” It wasn’t the first time he’d heard her say it, and in general he agreed with her.

“Still,” she said, tapping the envelope against her longish chin, “it’s going to stir up some rather unpleasant associations, isn’t it?”

“That’s for damn sure.” Nellie swallowed the last of his coffee, sucked hard on his pipe to make sure it was still lit, and abruptly stood up, not wanting to go into it with her just then. “It’s not even nine, and I’m not due at school until one I’m going to put in the thyme and cotoneaster out front. What do you think of that?”

“I’m utterly astounded, my dear. They’ve only been sitting out there three weeks.”

One week, actually, but that was Frieda for you. She enjoyed her little digs. Kneeling in the sun, working from his knees at a lazy pace, Nellie mixed the potting soil with earth from one of the planting holes in the prescribed three-to-one ratio.

“In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico,” D. H. Lawrence had written, “one sprang awake, a new part of the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way to the new.”