refinements. If Latin was anything, it was a refinement.
'Learning may be the best thing we have. It may be all that we can truly keep, Lorie,' Clara wrote in the letter, along with news about her girls and her horses.
Lorena read that sentence several times. In fact, she read it again, even after Clarie delivered her information. She felt her daughter's impatience, but she was reluctant to lay aside her letter, to go and attend to Charles Goodnight, the great pioneer.
'Ma, he's waiting--he already took his hat off!' Clarie said, annoyed at her mother's behavior. Mr. Goodnight was on the back steps, hat in hand. Why was she sitting there like that, reading a letter she had already read five or six times? Laurie had just taken the breast, and her mother had scarcely bothered to cover herself, even though the baby was now asleep. What was wrong with her?
'Ma!' Clarie said, deeply embarrassed.
'Oh hush, don't scold me, I've been scolded enough in my life already,' Lorena said.
She buttoned her dress and put the letter under a book--Aurora Leigh it was; she had ordered it from Kansas City--and went to the kitchen door. The old, heavy man with the gray hair and the gray beard stood there, patiently. A big gray horse waited behind him.
'I was busy. I'm sorry you had to wait,' Lorena apologized, opening the door for him.
She had heard that Goodnight was severe with women, but she had seen no sign of it in his behavior toward her. Despite her past, he had approved of her as a schoolteacher. Not everyone wealthy enough to simply write a check and have a schoolhouse built would have been so tolerant.
'I hesitate to bother you, ma'am,' Goodnight said.
'Come in, I can offer you buttermilk,' Lorena said, holding the door open.
Goodnight immediately came in and took a chair in the kitchen.
'I know you've got your duties, I'll be brief, though I would like the buttermilk,' he said. 'If I had been born in different circumstances, I could have made a life of drinking buttermilk.' Lorena poured him a large glass. He drank half of it and set the glass down.
Clarie peeked in at the door. She couldn't resist. Everyone talked about Mr. Goodnight, but she had only seen him once before, at a picnic, and he hadn't stayed around long enough for her to get a really good look at him.
'That's a fine-looking young lady there--I understand she helps out with the teaching,' Goodnight said.
'Yes, she's a great help,' Lorena said.
Clarie blushed, so unexpected was her mother's compliment; she had made it to the great man, too!
'I'm shaky at some of the arithmetic,' Lorena admitted. 'Clarie grasps fractions better than I do.' Goodnight drank the other half of the buttermilk and set the empty glass back on the table.
'I expect I could chase a fraction from dawn to sunset and never come near enough to grasp it,' he said.
Then he looked firmly at Clarie. The three boys, hearing an unfamiliar voice in the kitchen, were huddled behind her, peeking along with their big sister.
'I'll have to ask you young'uns to excuse us older folks,' he said. 'I've got a private matter to talk over with your mother.' 'Oh,' Clarie said. She immediately retreated, taking the boys with her. Georgie she had to forcibly drag by the collar. He had developed the ill-mannered habit of staring at guests.
Lorena felt a sudden alarm. Had something happened to Pea?
'No, your husband's fine, as far as I know,' Goodnight said, seeing the alarm in the woman's eyes. He felt sympathy for her, and much admiration. It was well known that she had not missed a day of school since taking her job. She arrived every day, in her buggy, in the coldest weather and in the muddiest weather, too. He himself had always been more vexed by mud than by cold, and so was Mary, his wife. Skirts and high-button shoes were a great nuisance when it was muddy, Mary claimed, and he didn't doubt it a bit.
This young woman had strength, and she didn't neglect her duties; that he admired. He felt uneasy, though, at the nature of the inquiry he had come to make. The uneasiness had kept him at home for two weeks or more, since he had first been told that Mox Mox, the manburner, had appeared again. This woman had a difficult past; he knew that, but he didn't care. Life was an uneven business. He knew himself to be of a judgmental nature--too judgmental, his wife assured him. But with the schoolmarm, he had no urge to pass judgment.
She was not the only woman in the Panhandle to have had an uneven life, and her performance with her pupils had been splendid, in his opinion. Her past was between her and her husband. Goodnight was not a preacher, and he had no mission to save the world, either.
'You're sure he's not dead?' Lorena asked. She couldn't help it. She'd had several bad dreams, since Pea Eye left, and in all of them he was either dead or about to be.
'If he is, I haven't heard it,' Goodnight said.
'Then what is it, Mr. Goodnight?' Lorena asked. 'What is it?' 'It's Mox Mox,' Goodnight replied.
Lorena knew then why it had taken an old man, known all over the West for his abruptness, so long to come to the point. Her first urge was to run and lock her children in the bedroom, where they couldn't possibly even hear the name Goodnight had just spoken.
At the same time, she felt too weak to stand up. A rush of fear broke in her such as she had not felt for many years.
Goodnight saw it--the woman had come into the kitchen a little flustered, some color in her cheeks. But the color left her, as soon as he spoke Mox Mox's name. It was as if the blood had suddenly been milked from her, with one squeeze.
'But he's dead, ain't he?' Lorena asked.
It was the first time she had slipped and said 'ain't' in many months.
