Not from within the house, from outside it. She was in the garden when she heard the wagon coming up the road, and she straightened and shaded her eyes and watched it pull into the yard. Two women she didn't know, dressed well for a ranch call, sitting up straight in the seat with the particular posture of people who have decided they are doing something charitable. The one holding the reins was perhaps 50, broad-shouldered, with a face that had once been handsome and now settled into an expression of permanent assessment. Clara had seen that face in various towns in various form, the face of a woman who has decided that knowing everyone's business is a form of community service.
"Mrs. Whittaker?" The woman said before Clara had reached the fence. "That's," Clara said. "I'm Edna Hargrove," the woman said.
"My husband owns Hargrove Feed and Grain. We're on the church committee." She said it the way people say things they expect to confer authority. "This is Ruth Marsh, the reverend's wife." "Good afternoon," Clara said to both of them.
Ruth Marsh was smaller, quieter, with the look of someone who went along with things and had been doing it for so long she had stopped noticing. "We came to welcome you to Red Willow Creek," Edna Hargrove said, and the warmth in her voice had a practiced quality that Clara recognized immediately. It was the warmth of someone who has come to look at something, not welcome it. "It must have been quite an adjustment, taking on seven children." "It's been a good adjustment," Clara said.
"Of course, of course." Edna looked at the house, back at Clara, at the garden behind her. "We did wonder, well, the reverend wondered, and naturally I agreed about the arrangement here." "You're not, that is, you and Mr. Holloway haven't."
"We've corresponded by letter, and I've been employed as housekeeper and caretaker," Clara said, pleasantly and precisely. "Which I believe is what the advertisement stated." "Yes, but living in the home," Edna said, "delicately." "With seven children present," Clara said, equally delicately. Ruth Marsh had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable.
Edna pressed forward. "We only ask because we care about the family," she said. "The Holloways have been through a great deal. The children especially. And bringing a stranger in under these circumstances, when Mr.
Holloway has been, well, he's been alone for some time." "Three years," Clara said. "Yes, and we worry." "You're very kind to worry," Clara said. "The children are well.
The household is running. Sam recovered fully from his fever last week, which perhaps you heard about." "I'll tell Mr. Holloway you stopped by." It was a dismissal delivered with complete courtesy, and Edna Hargrove recognized it as such, which Clara could see in the slight tightening of her mouth.