Her shoulders shook. Ruth, Eleanor said. I'm not laughing, Ruth said into her hands. You are absolutely laughing, Eleanor said. I'm just Ruth looked up.
Her eyes were bright. You know, he offered Thomas twice what that farm is worth when it was still the Harker Place. Two years ago, Thomas turned him down because he wanted the land for himself and then couldn't keep up the taxes and that's how it ended up. She stopped. "You didn't know that." Eleanor stared at her.
"Thomas couldn't manage the taxes on it," Ruth said more carefully. And rather than sell to Harrington, he he put it in your name, which let him feel like he was doing something generous rather than just letting it go. The silence that followed had several layers to it. Eleanor worked through all of them. So, he wasn't only trying to manage me, she said slowly.
He was also solving a tax problem. Eleanor, he solved two problems with one deed, she said. Got rid of a property he couldn't afford and a sister he didn't know what to do with. She paused. That is that is actually almost impressive in its efficiency.
Ruth looked at her with the careful attention of someone monitoring a situation that could resolve in several very different directions. Eleanor started to laugh. It was not a light laugh. It came from somewhere deep and complicated and it had the slightly ragged edge of something that had been held in a long time, but it was genuine. And once it started, it took a while to stop.
Eleanor. Ruth said again now with less concern. I'm fine, Eleanor said, not entirely accurately. I'm fine. I just, she shook her head.
I spent 4 months being angry at Thomas for being thoughtless. And he wasn't even being thoughtless. He was being efficient. She wiped her eyes. I almost respect it more.
You are a very strange woman, Ruth said with deep affection. I know, Eleanor said. Hand me that coffee. The Chicago businessman, Gerald Marsh, arrived in the second week of June in a rented buggy with two leather trunks and the slightly overwhelmed expression of a cityman who has underestimated the distances involved in traveling the Montana countryside. He was 40, precise in the way of a man who deals in figures.
And he stood at Eleanor's front door with the careful neutrality of someone who has been told a place is good, but is reserving judgment. Hi gave up the neutrality by the end of the first evening. Eleanor did not modify her approach for a man from Chicago. She fed him what she fed everyone, good food made from what she grew and raised, without apology for its plainness, and without performance of anything other than what it was. She showed him to the better of the two rooms.