novel change from the soggybiscuit-underneath-and-on-top approach. She looked down at her watch and realized with a start that it was past three o'clock. 'Oh! I didn't know it was so late. I'm sorry, but I do have to go now.'
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Fairchild. I'm going to stay on myself and spend the night here, but everything is in fine shape.'
“Who knows? Maybe the storm won't be that bad. And please, call me Faith.'
“Thank you, Faith—and you can call me Violet if you like.”
It would be hard, Faith thought, but she would try—for Violet's sake.
She ran up the stairs and through the living room. Several of the residents were standing by the windows looking at the mounting drifts of snow and making predictions.
“It might be another 1978,' Ellery Cabot observed.
Faith could never figure out if local residents made this remark (which they tended to do when more than a few flakes of snow fell) fearfully or nostalgically. It was usually followed by reminis- cences of exactly how many days they were without power and confined to their respective dwellings by the over-three-foot snowfall.
Ellery's wife, Julia, turned and saw Faith. 'Are you sure you should drive home in this? It's really coming down now.'
“I'll be all right,' Faith replied. 'Aleford isn't far, and once I get on Route 2, the rest will be easy.'
“If you change your mind, there's plenty of room here,' Julia offered.
“Thank you,' Faith said, pulled open the front door, and stepped outside. A blast of snow and cold air hit her full in the face as the door slammed shut behind her. It was worse than she thought, but she had no desire to spend the night away from home.
The car started at once, and she inched down the long driveway. It had been sanded again, and she pulled onto the main road with a sigh of relief that was was immediately drawn back into her lungs less than half a mile later as the car slid completely out of control. She steered in the direction of the skid, stayed calm, and came to a halt hood down in a pile of snow the size of the state of Alaska.
“Damn, damn, damn,' she muttered aloud and smacked the steering wheel. She didn't even have her Leon Leonwood Bean boots on, the ones for which she had reluctantly traded her Joan and Davids her first winter in Aleford. She was wearing her down parka and warm gloves, though.
She got out of the car and tied her red muffler to the antenna, where it waved cheerily in the wind. 'Damn this weather. Damn this climate. Damn this place.' She'd never gone off the road in Manhattan. She didn't even have to drive in Manhattan.
She crossed the road and started back the way she'd come. Soon her feet had lost all feeling and the snow was choking her. Her cheeks stung painfully. She kept her head down and tried to keep the flakes from gluing her eyelashes shut so she could see where she was going. She felt like Little Eva on the ice floes. After what seemed like twenty-four hours, she saw the almost obliterated sign for Hubbard House and started trudging up the steep driveway. When she got around the bend, the sight of the lighted houses looming up ahead was so welcome that she started to sprint and immediately slipped and fell headlong, but unhurt, on top of one of the frozen rhododendrons.
The Cabots were still gazing out the window and had the door open before she reached the top step.
“Oh, Faith, what happened? Are you all right?' Julia cried.
“Come over here by the fire, dear,' Ellery said. 'Julia, get some brandy, would you?'
“I'm fine,' Faith whispered. 'But my car went off the road. I've got to call my husband.'
“Of course, but warm up a moment first,' Ellery advised, and guided her over to the hearth, where she took off her things. The snow fell in large clumps on the deep-red oriental rug. Ellery gathered up the sodden garments and Faith collapsed in an enormous wing chair. Her toes and fingers immediately began to throb painfully.
Julia returned with a large snifter of brandy, some slippers, and a towel. She also had a lap rug, which she threw over Faith. After a few minutes, pleasant feelings of warmth and safety began to creep over her. Various parts of her body stopped hurting. She almost nodded off, then sat up with a jerk. 'I've got to call Tom. He'll be frantic.”
He was. After she had reassured him, she told him how admirable it was that he wasn't saying 'I told you so.'
“I know and I did,' he said. 'I was afraid you'd get stuck, and I hate to spend the night without you.'
“Me too,' agreed Faith. The brandy and warm surroundings had restored her. 'Well, since I'm here I'd better go down to the kitchen and help Mrs. Pendergast get dinner.'
“I think you've done enough, honey, but if you feel like it. It's up to you.'
“It's that or learn to play cribbage.'
“You could sit and read a book. In any case, it hasn't been my impression that Hubbard House was filled with sedentary cribbage players.'
“You're right. They're probably out shoveling snow, filling bird feeders, or looking for other hapless maidens, like myself, with kegs of clam chowder tied around their necks.”
Faith hung up and went back to the living roomto thank the Cabots. They were waiting in front of the fire, and when she told them she was going down to the kitchen, they were adamant she remain with them and sit at their table for dinner.
“Mrs. Pendergast has all the help she needs and then some,' Julia told her. 'I was down there a little while ago, and Leandra has organized crews from now to the end of the emergency, which could be months from the look of her forces.”
Faith gave in and tucked herself back before the fire. She picked up a newspaper and pretended to read. She missed Ben. She missed Tom.
Ellery left to get something from their apartment, and Faith asked Julia, 'Have you lived here long?'
“For about five years. The house was getting to be more than we wanted to manage, and although Ellery is in excellent health, we thought it best to be in a facility where he could get more extensive care if he needed it and I could be near him. He's over eighty, you know.' Faith had been surprised to hear Ellery's age at the Holly Ball and expressed it aloud now.
“He certainly doesn't look his age,' she commented, swiftly changing 'that old' to 'his age' in the interests of politeness.
Julia nodded, 'I'm somewhat younger, and a few of my friends warned me about moving here. In some places the less elderly residents become a bit like pets—infantilized. Even though at times a woman in her sixties might like to be thought of as a young thing, as a steady diet it wouldn't have been too pleasant.'
“Then it hasn't happened.'
“No, partly because I'm still working, so I'm only around in the evenings and on weekends. And Ellery and I are out a great deal. It's also because so many of the people here are fiercely independent. They don't need or want someone to wind their wool or fetch their slippers.”
Faith stretched her feet out in front of her. 'It was very nice of you to fetch them for me, though.' She decided she liked the Cabots. On closer inspection, Julia was even prettier than she had seemed at the ball. Her hair was down now and framed her face in soft waves. Ellery looked like the generic New England Yankee gentleman of advancing years he was—ruddy complexion from sailing out of Marblehead, tall, wiry, white-haired, with clear blue eyes that didn't miss much. She guessed he did something downtown. It was immediately confirmed.
“Ellery's first wife died early in their marriage. We met when I came to practice in his law office. He likes it that I'm there to report back to him, and he still goes in occasionally. He's painstakingly working on a book of memoirs—wanted to call it My First Hundred Years, but Eddie Bernays beat him to it.”
Faith spent what was left of the afternoon in front of the fire chatting with Julia and meeting some of the other residents. She was confirmed in her first impression—that the group at Hubbard House was a resilient, vigorous one, involved in both the small world around them and the larger one outside. One man spent a half hour describinghis work organizing a local recycling station. Another woman stopped by to remind Julia that the committee that met to invite local authors to come and speak would be meeting on Monday night. Faith didn't doubt that the inhabitants of Hubbard House suffered the aches, pains, and various discomforts old age brought—some of them serious—yet they dealt with them and kept on going. Business as usual, if possible.
Ellery reappeared and they went in to dinner. The dining room was full and everyone was enjoying the novelty of the first big storm. There was an air of excitement in the room and a noise level, though subdued, that
