Imogene laughed. “Not many.”

            “Unfortunately, I’m not the one to talk to. Bishop Whitaker does the hiring. I can give you his address if you like; I’m sure he’d be amenable to talking with you if you stopped by. I think all the positions are filled, but you should give it a try.” Kate scribbled on a slip of paper with a silver pencil she wore on a chain pinned to her bodice, and handed the note to Imogene. “Would you like me to show you around?” she asked. Imogene accepted and followed her into the cool recesses of the building.

            Kate Sills led her through the maze of rooms on each floor—schoolrooms, recitation rooms, music rooms, dormitories, the receiving parlor. The harsh lines of worry carved into Imogene’s brow began to ease; she forgot herself in the halls of the school, with its fine rooms and offices, all so new they still smelled of the trees they had been built with. She took off her gloves and ran her palms over the smooth wood of the pianos. “There are five,” Kate said as she, too, admired the workmanship. “Tuned.”

            Bishop Whitaker’s school was to have everything: art, music, French, cooking, mineralogy, trigonometry, Old Testament history, astronomy, croquet, painting, philosophy, and bathrooms. Imogene forgot the Broken Promise, the bills, and Sarah Mary.

            Talking steadily, comfortably, calling each other by their Christian names, Kate and Imogene rested in the cool of the kitchen over glasses of cold tea. “My mother used to have an old cook,” Imogene said. “She was the fattest woman I had ever seen. She could eat more than any two men. I used to sit down in the kitchen with her, afternoons in winter. I remember watching her consume enormous quantities of food and follow it with half an apple pie. Then she’d lean back, pat her stomach, and wink at me. ‘I think I’ve died and gone to pig heaven,’ she’d say.” Imogene looked around the wide, windowed dining room. “That’s how I feel. I’m in pig heaven.”

            She stopped at Bishop Whitaker’s on her way back to the hotel. He was out, Mrs. Whitaker said, but she was welcome to wait. Imogene sat in the dim parlor, chatting with Mrs. Whitaker until her husband returned.

            Ozi Whitaker looked like a picture out of the Old Testament of an illustrated King James Bible: a snow-white beard cut in the shape of a spade, a fringe of white hair around a bald dome, and features as sharp and unyielding as chiseled granite. Imogene stood automatically as he strode into the parlor; he was not a large man but he dominated the room. His thin-lipped mouth opened like a trap: “Mrs. Whitaker,” he said, “we seem to have an unexpected guest.”

            Before Imogene could find voice, the bishop held out a cupped hand—a cottontail rabbit, not more than five inches from nose to tail, shivered there in his palm. Mrs. Whitaker lifted the little creature from her husband’s outstretched hand and, excusing herself, left the room. “One of the dogs had gotten it,” the bishop explained. “I’ll let it go out in the meadow when it’s old enough to fend for itself.” He smiled and gestured to the dusky green settee. Imogene sat abruptly, not quite recovered from his entrance.

            The bishop sat down opposite her, completely at ease with the silence, watching her with kindly eyes and waiting until she was ready to speak.

            “I was up at your school today,” Imogene began, and Ozi Whitaker leaned forward in his chair like a child about to hear a favorite story retold. “It’s the most beautifully thought-out school I have ever seen. Ever imagined.”

            “Ah.” He sat back, smiling.

            “I’m a teacher.”

            He thrust out his beard. “Are you a good teacher?”