"I've got it in mind," he announced, "to have a prayer-meetin', come Wednesday. I'm goin' to put up a notice in the post-office."
He turned a reminding look on Tira who responded by what seemed to Nan an unwilling confirmation:
"You're invited to come."
"You're all invited," said Tenney harshly, as if Tira had lagged in urgency. "All on ye."
"Thank you," said Nan, with a cheerful decisiveness. "I'll come."
Tenney slapped the reins and they went on, to a jingling of bells thinly melodious in the clear air, and Nan turned back to her house. How beautiful she was, the strange woman, she thought, with a renewal of her wonder over Tira, the calm majesty of her, the way she sat erect in the old red sleigh as if she were queen of a triumphal progress, the sad inscrutability of her wonderful eyes, the mouth with its evasive curves; how would an artist indicate them delicately enough so that you kept them in your memory as she saw herself doing, and were yet not able to say whether it was the indented corner or the full bow? She found herself remembering poetic lines about Grecian Helen, and then recalling herself to New England and the unlikelihood of such bewitchingness. There couldn't be a woman so compact of mystery and unconsidered aloofness, and yet beauty, beauty to the bone.
When the Tenneys drove by Raven's, each with face set forward, not looking at the house, Raven was in the kitchen consulting Charlotte about supplies. Jerry, also, was going to town, for, imperious even in her unspoken needs, Amelia would have to be delicately fed. Charlotte, hearing the bells, glanced absently at the window and Raven's eyes followed. He felt his heart give a little added start, of relief, he knew. At least Tenney wouldn't stop the horse and brain his wife on the road.
"There's the Tenneys," said Charlotte. "That's a queer kind of a woman, that wife he's got."
"Why is she?" Raven demanded.
Whatever Charlotte felt, he must pluck it out of her. It was sure to be true.