A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly Page B

know what it is. She's as thin as a pike pole. Got that waxy look to her, too. Cancer of the breast. I just know it. Same as your mamma, God rest her." There was a sigh, and then a sniffle, and then Aunt Josie was dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief. "Poor, dear Ellen," she sobbed.
    I was used to these displays. My aunt didn't have much to distract her and she tended to dwell. "Look, Aunt Josie," I said, pointing at the doctor's house. "There's Mrs. Howard going in. What's wrong with her?"
    My aunt honked and coughed and pulled aside the curtain again. "Sciatica," she said, brightening considerably. "Pinched nerve in the spine. Told me it pains her something awful." Aunt Josie loves a good illness. She can talk about signs and symptoms for hours on end and is considered to be something of an authority on catarrh, piles, shingles, dropped wombs, ruptures, and impetigo.
    "There's Alma on her way home," she said, craning her neck. Alma Mclntyre was the postmistress and my aunt's good friend. "Who's she with, Mattie? Who's that talking to her? She handing him something?"
    I looked out the window. "It's Mr. Satterlee," I said. "She's giving him an envelope."
    "Is she? I wonder what's in it." She knocked on the window, trying to get Mrs. Mclntyre's attention, or Mr. Satterlee's, but they didn't hear her. "Arn's been seen up at the Hubbard place twice this week, Mattie. You know anything about it?"
    "No, ma'am."
    "You find out something, be sure and tell me."
    "Yes, ma'am," I replied, trying yet again to find an opening in the conversation so I could make my request, but my aunt didn't give me one.
    "There goes Emily Wilcox," she said, watching my teacher walk by. "Thinks quite a lot of herself, that one. She'll never find herself a husband. No one likes a too-smart woman."
    Aunt Josie must be reading Milton, too,
I thought.
He says the same thing, only in fancier Language.
    "You know, Mattie, I'm certain that Emily Wilcox is from the Iverson Wilcoxes of New York City, but its odd because Iverson Wilcox has three daughters—two married, one a spinster. That's what Alma said and she would know; after all, her brother used to be a caretaker at the Sagamore, and the Wilcoxes summered there—but Annabelle Wilcox is a Miss and Emily Wilcox is a Miss—Alma says the return address on her letters always say
Miss
Wilcox. And Emily teaches. She would have to be a Miss if she teaches. She gets letters from a Mrs. Edward Mayhew—Alma's sure that's Charlotte, the third sister, and she's obviously married—but if only one is supposed to be a spinster, why are two of them Misses? She also gets letters from an Iverson Jr.—that's her brother, of course. And from a Mr. Theodore Baxter—I don't know who he is. And from a Mr. John Van Eck of Scribner and Sons—a publishing concern. What's young woman doing corresponding with publishers? They're a very shady bunch. You mark my words, Mattie, there's something fast about that woman."
    Aunt Josie said all this with barely a breath. Pa says Uncle Vernon should rent her out to the forge; they could use her for a bellows. As soon as my teacher had turned a corner and Aunt Josie couldn't see her anymore, she stopped disparaging Miss Wilcox and changed the topic. To me.
    "I heard you were out gallivanting with Royal Loomis the other day," she said.
    I groaned, wondering if the entire county knew. I still hadn't heard the end of it, especially from Weaver, who'd no said, "Gee, Matt, I always knew you liked dumb animals, but Royal Loomis?"
    Lou teased me, then told everyone she knew, and they teased me, too. I tried hard to be good-natured about it, but I couldn't. Anyone with eyes could see that Royal was handsome and I was plain. And them going on and on about me being sweet on him was mean. Like asking a lame girl what she's wearing to the dance.
    "I wasn't '
gallivanting
,'" I told my aunt. "Royal and I happened to be at the pickle boat at the same time and he gave me a ride home, that's