Albert was a great bulk coming in at a door, coming nearer, taking his seat under the dim lamp when he sat in her parlor. His face was large and firm, sudden in its appraisals, but he was uncertain of her and of himself. She saw his uncertainty of her in his quick scrutiny of her when he spoke. The men would have to pool, he said. He had talked to twenty farmers and growers that day. He was dog tired. Some men were fools, unable to see their own good when it stood less than three inches away. She would turn to the fiddle, making herself remote.
She would pluck at his talkative music, making it utter its bland commonplace between flights of well-bowed musical comment, musical scorn. She would wrap each common saying into a sheaf bound lightly with shreds of scintillating clamor.
“Where’d you get that? How’d you know to do all that truck?” he asked.
“Imelda Montford wrote a diary and she left it in an old hamper. ‘I want to lern grek and laten. I will not be a idle fol. I will have what is in boks.’” She traced the words on the wall with her finger. “Roland built a bridge for a deposed king to ride on. William had red hair and owned nine thousand acres of Virginia land. Rufus bought a negro wench and three men from Captain Custer, and made a note of it in the back of a geography book. Thomas Montford bought a horse from Asa Fielding and left a note of that on the fly-leaf of an old grammar. Anne had a town named in her honor, Anneville. You know the place.”
“Anneville. I know. Gosh, yes.”
“Theodosia Montford took Luke Bell to husband and then the Bells got into the story.”
“Took. God’s sake! It’s my opinion she got took.”
“Gules two lions couchant argent....”
“What you a-comen to?”
“Gules with a fess and six crosslets gold....”