“No. I’m perfectly happy the way things are. I just wish I could be a doctor.”

“Well, I wish I could be the King of England, but that’s not going to happen either. Some things are just out of our reach, Annabelle, and we have to accept that. You have a good life as it is.”

“Yes, I do,” she agreed. “And I love my mother. I wouldn’t do anything to upset her, and that would upset her a lot.”

“Yes, it would.”

“She’s been through so much this year, and I just want to make her happy.”

“You do,” he said comfortably. “I can see it. You’re a wonderful daughter to her, and a lovely person.”

“No, she’s not,” Hortie said, as she appeared from nowhere and sidled up to them. She had come back to go swimming with Annabelle again. “She dissected a frog once. She read how to do it in a book. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. She is definitely not a lovely person.” All three of them laughed at what she said.

“I assume that’s true,” Josiah said, beginning to know Annabelle better. She was a most remarkable young woman, in many ways.

“Yes, it is,” Annabelle said proudly. “I did it just like the book told me. It was very interesting. I wish I could dissect a real person. A corpse, you know, like in medical school.”

“Oh my God,” Hortie said, looking woozy, and Josiah looked shocked but amused.

“You two had better go swimming,” he said, and shooed them off as he went up to the porch to say good-bye to Consuelo.

“What were the three of you talking about?” she asked him with interest.

“Oh the usual, parties, debuts, engagements, weddings,” he said, covering for Annabelle, knowing that her mother would faint if she thought that Annabelle wished she could dissect a cadaver. He was still laughing to himself as he walked back to his own cottage. Annabelle Worthington was certainly an interesting young woman, and not the usual nineteen-year-old girl at all.