The Progress of Love

swallowing such nonsense. He said he was a man with a mule for a wife and a hooligan daughter running his house. Dawn Rose and Bonnie Hope ran to confront Violet.
    “Liar! Butchers don’t chop up children! You told a lie, liar!”
    Violet, who was cleaning out the stove at the time, said nothing. She picked up a pan of ashes—warm but, fortunately, not hot—and dumped it on their heads. They knew enough not to tell a second time. They ran outside and rolled in the grass and shook themselves like dogs, trying to get the ashes out of their hair and ears and eyes and underwear. Down in a corner of the orchard, they started their own playhouse, with pulled grass heaped up for seats and bits of broken china for dishes. They vowed not to tell Violet.
    But they couldn’t keep away from her. She put their hair up in rags to curl it; she dressed them in costumes made from old curtains; she painted their faces, using concoctions of berry juice and flour and stove polish. She found out about the playhouse and had ideas for furnishing it that were superior to theirs. Even on the days when she had no time for them at all, they had to watch what she was doing.
    She was painting a design of red roses on the black and worn-out kitchen linoleum.
    She was cutting a scalloped edge on all the old green window blinds for elegance.
    It did seem as if ordinary family life had been turned upsidedown at their place. At other farms, it would usually be the children you would see first as you came up the lane—children playing, or doing some chore. The mother would be hidden in the house. Here it was Aunt Ivie you would see, hilling up the potatoes or just prowling around the yard or the chicken run, wearing rubber boots and a man’s felt hat and a dingy assortment of sweaters, skirt, droopy slip and apron, and wrinkled, spattered stockings. It was Violet who ruled in the house, Violet who decided when and if to pass out the pieces of bread and butter and corn syrup. It was as if King Billy and Aunt Ivie had not quite understood how to go about making an ordinary life, even if they had meant to.
    But the family got along. They milked the cows and sold the milk to the cheese factory and raised the calves for the butcher and cut the hay. They were members of the Anglican church, though they didn’t often attend, owing to the problems of getting Aunt Ivie cleaned up. They did go sometimes to the card parties in the schoolhouse. Aunt Ivie could play cards, and she would remove her apron and felt hat to do so, though she wouldn’t change her boots. King Billy had some reputation as a singer, and after the card-playing, people would try to get him to entertain. He liked to sing songs he had learned from the loggers that were never written down. He sang with his fists clenched and his eyes closed, resolutely:
“On the Opeongo Line I drove a span of bays ,
One summer once upon a time for Hooligan and Hayes ,
Now that them bays is dead and gone and grim old age is mine ,
I’m dreamin’ that I’m teamin’, on the Opeongo Line.”
    Who was Hooligan? Who was Hayes?
    “Some outfit,” said King Billy, expansive from the singing.
    Violet went to high school in town, and after that to normal school in Ottawa. People wondered where King Billy got the money. If he still had some put by from his railway pay, that meant he had got some money from Aunt Ivie’s family when he took her off their hands and bought the farm. King Billy said he didn’t grudge Violetan education—he thought being a teacher would suit her. But he didn’t have anything extra for her. Before she started at high school, she went across the fields to the next farm, carrying a piece of Roman-striped crepe she had found in the trunk. She wanted to learn to use the sewing machine, so that she could make herself a dress. And so she did, though the neighbor woman said it was the oddest-looking outfit for a schoolgirl that she ever hoped to see.
    Violet came home every weekend when she was at high school, and told her sisters about Latin and basketball, and looked after the house as before. But when she went away to Ottawa, she stayed until Christmas. Dawn Rose and Bonnie Hope were big enough by then to take care of the house, but whether they did or not was another matter. Dawn Rose was actually big enough to be starting high school, but she had failed her last year at the local school and was repeating it. She and Bonnie Hope were in the same class.
    When Violet came home for