I have a few minutes, she said. Come in. She put coffee on because that that was what you did. And she set two cups on the kitchen table and sat down across from him and waited with her hands flat on the table. The same posture she'd used with Thomas.
The posture of a woman who is not in a hurry and is not afraid of whatever comes next. Harington looked at the kitchen, at the shelves of preserved jars, at the organized workspace, at the quality of the room itself, and she could see him adjusting what he'd expected to find. You've been accepting travelers, he said. I have, she said. The Puit man, Harrington said, and others.
Yes, I have a proposition, he said. Not a purchase offer. He said it quickly, preempting the refusal she was already forming. I have a business associate coming through next month from Chicago. Important man.
He needs accommodation. Good accommodation. And the boarding house in town is not. He paused in the way of a man choosing diplomatic language for the opinion that the boarding house was a disgrace, not suitable for his purposes. Eleanor looked at him.
"You want to send a Chicago businessman to sleep on my farm," she said. "I want to send a Chicago businessman to the best accommodation in this county," Harrington said, which appears to be your farm. He said it with the particular difficulty of a man making an admission that costs him something. His name is Gerald Marsh. Any relation to Ida?
Eleanor asked. Harrington blinked. Her husband's nephew, he said. From the city branch of the family. Eleanor looked at her coffee cup for a moment.
I'll need to know his arrival date 3 days in advance, she said. And my price for a Chicago businessman is a third. Again, my standard rate. Harrington stared at her. Those are my terms, Eleanor said pleasantly.
That's he started. Those are my terms," she said again in exactly the same tone. Harington put his coffee cup down. Something moved through his expression that took a moment to identify. It was, she realized, respect, "The kind that comes not from admiration, but from the clean recognition of an equal." "All right," he said.
After he left, Elellanar sat at her kitchen table for a long moment. Then she went to find Ruth. Charles Harrington just asked me to accommodate his Chicago associate, she said, at a premium rate because I am apparently now the best option in the county. Ruth sat down on Eleanor's porch steps. She put her face in her hands.