The Progress of Love

that the countryside looked lovely now with the buttercups blooming along the roads, but as she sat watching to see if any moving shape detached itself from the bulging shadows in the yard, and listening for soft footsteps, she thought that she really hated the country. Parks were nicer for grass and flowers, and the trees along the streets in Ottawa were as fine as you could ask for. Order prevailed there, and some sort of intelligence. Out here was emptiness, rumor, and absurdity. What would the people who had asked her to dinner think if they could see her sitting here with a shotgun in front of her?
    Suppose the intruder, the murderer, did come up the steps? She would have to shoot at him. Any wound from a shotgun would be terrible, that close. There would be a court case and her picture would be in the papers. HILLBILLY SQUABBLE .
    If she didn’t hit him, it would be worse.
    When she heard a thump, she was on her feet, with her heart pounding. Instead of picking up the gun, she had pushed it away. She had thought the sound was on the porch, but when she heard it again she knew it was upstairs. She knew, too, that she had been asleep.
    It was only her sisters. Bonnie Hope had to go outside to the toilet.
    Violet lit the lantern for them. “You didn’t need to both get up,” she said. “I could have gone with you.”
    Bonnie Hope shook her head and pulled on Dawn Rose’s hand. “I want her,” she said.
    This fright seemed to be making them into near imbeciles. They would not look at Violet. Could they even remember the days when they had, and she had instructed and spoiled them, and tried to make them pretty?
    “Why can’t you wear your nightgowns?” Violet said sadly,and closed the door. She sat by the gun until they came back and went to bed. Then she lit the stove and made coffee, because she was afraid of falling asleep again.
    When she saw the sky getting light, she opened the door. The dog stood up, shivered all over, and went to drink from the plugged dishpan by the pump. The yard was surrounded by white mist. Between the house and the barn was a rocky hump of land, and the rocks were dark with the dampness of night. What was their farm but a few acres of shallow soil scattered in among rubbly hills and swamp? What folly to think you could settle in there and live a life and raise a family.
    On the top step was an out-of-place object—a neat, glistening horse bun. Violet looked for a stick to push it off with, then saw the piece of paper underneath.
Don’t think your stuck-up slut of a daughter can help you. I see you all the time and I hate her and you. How would you like to get this rammed down your throat?
    He must have put it here during the last hour of the night, while she was drinking her coffee at the kitchen table. He could have looked in through the window and seen her. She ran to wake her sisters to ask if they had seen anything when they went out, and they said no, nothing. They had gone down those steps and back up with the lantern, and there was nothing. He had put it there since.
    One thing this told Violet that she was glad of. Aunt Ivie could have had nothing to do with it. Aunt Ivie had been shut up in her room all night. Not that Violet really thought that her mother was spiteful enough or crazy enough to do such a thing. But she knew what people said. She knew there would be people now saying they were not too surprised about what was going on here. They would just be saying that certain people attract peculiar troubles, that in the vicinity of certain people things are more likely to happen.
    Violet worked all day at cleaning up. Her letter to Trevor lay on the dresser. She never got down to the mailbox with it. Peopledropped in, and it was the same as yesterday—the same talk, the same suspicions and speculations. The only difference was that there was the new note to show.
    Annabelle brought them fresh bread. She read the note and said, “It just makes me sick to my stomach. So close, too. You could’ve almost heard him breathing, Violet. Your nerves must be about shot.”
    “There’s not nobody can realize it,” said Aunt Ivie proudly. “What us up here are going through.”
    “Anybody even steps on this place after dark,” King Billy said, “from now on he’s likely to get shot. And that’s all I’ve got to say.”
    After they had eaten supper, and milked, and turned out the cows, Violet took her letter down to the mailbox for the mailman to pick up in the