“And now I’m going to take care of _you_, and you’re never going to work.” She rose and walked into the parlor, opening the sacred shutters wide and seating herself at the old-time organ with its carpet-covered pedals and apricot plush stool. She began playing chords, her blue eyes looking across the road, beyond the old box-car wagon, as if she saw visions of worlds still to be conquered—the worlds that the child Thurley had pledged herself to know. There was little in Betsey Pilrig’s house of value to Thurley, but mere furnishings never mattered. She was oblivious to shabby carpets, and, when she dusted the parlor furniture or set the table with nicked and varied styles of china, she was too busy singing or thinking of Dan to notice her actual surroundings. Nor did clothes bother Thurley—she was happy in a white middy blouse and a serge skirt and quite as beautiful as if she wore a Paquin creation. Besides, Thurley rebelled at taking help from Betsey Pilrig and her only way of earning money was limited. Even if one was the best singer and piano teacher in the township with the commendation of having learned: first, all Kate Sills knew, which ended with an E flat valse and “Dixie” with variations; and, second, all that a small city organist could teach her during his summer vacation spent in the Corners, and, last, all Thurley herself taught herself by diligent practice and “just coming natural to her”—even so, who wanted to pay more than twenty-five cents an hour to learn how to sing or play on the piano? So Thurley was forced to content herself with being organist, choir mistress and soloist in the church, with a dozen pupils to round out her income. Whenever she begged Dan to let her clerk in his store, he always asked her to marry him, thus blockading her desire. With a restless gesture she closed the organ. “Ho-hum, I need Dan to make love to me,” she ruminated. “I can’t seem to make myself take anything seriously. I wonder why God made the Precores stop off here instead of a city—things would have been different in a city....” A moment later she mentally upbraided herself, “As if you weren’t the luckiest girl in the world! You ought to get down on your knees and ask poor ’Raine to forgive you, and Dan and Granny, too.... Go out and start a patchwork quilt this instant and don’t let a single song be heard in this house until it is a third finished!” But the scolding seemed to have no effect, for, instead, she reopened the organ and sang the opera aria she had just learned. As she finished it, she spied Miss Clergy’s shabby coupé pausing behind the clump of maple trees. “Why—that’s the second time within a few days!” Thurley said delightedly. “Now—I wonder....” * * * * *