These High, Green Hills Read Free

at the Main Street Grill.
    “How’s that?” asked the rector.
    “Married an‘ all, you’ll not be comin’ in regular, I take it.” The proprietor of the Grill felt hurt and betrayed, he could tell.
    “You’ve got that wrong, my friend.”
    “I do?” said Percy, brightening.
    “I’ll be coming in as regular as any man could. My wife has a working life of her own, being a well-known children’s book writer and illustrator. She will not be trotting out hot vittles for my lunch every day—not by a long shot.”
    Percy looked suspicious. “What about breakfast?”
    “That,” said the rector, pocketing the change, “is another matter entirely.”
    Percy frowned. He liked his regulars to be married to his place of business.

    He looked up from his chair in the study. Curlers, again.
    “I have to wear curlers,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I’m going to Lowell tomorrow.”
    “Lowell? Whatever for?”
    “A school thing. They want me to read Violet Goes to France to their French class, and then do a program in the auditorium.”
    “Must you?”
    “Must I what? Read Violet Goes to France? That’s what they asked me to read.”
    “No, must you go to Lowell?”
    “Well, yes.”
    He didn’t want to say anything so idiotic, but he would miss her, as if she were being dropped off the end of the earth.
    A long silence ensued as she curled up on the sofa and opened a magazine. He tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate.
    He hadn’t once thought of her traveling with her work. Uneasy, he tried to let the news sink in. Lowell. Somebody there had been shot on the street in broad daylight.
    And another thing—Lowell was a full hundred miles away. Did she have good brakes? Plenty of gas? When had she changed her oil?
    “How’s your oil?” he asked soberly.
    She laughed as if he’d said something hilariously funny. Then she left the sofa and came to him and kissed him on the forehead. He was instantly zapped by the scent of wisteria, and went weak in the knees.
    She looked him in the eye. “I love it when you talk like that. My oil is fine, how’s yours?”
    “Cynthia, Cynthia,” he said, pulling her into his lap.

    “Guess what?” said Emma, who was taping a photo of her new grandchild on the wall next to her desk.
    This was his secretary’s favorite game, and one he frankly despised. “What?”
    “Guess!”
    “Let’s see. You’re going to quit working for the Episcopalians and go to work for the Baptists.” He wished.
    “I wish,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Try again.”
    “Blast, Emma, I hate this game.”
    “It’s good for you, it exercises the brain.”
    “Esther Bolick’s orange marmalade cake recipe is coming out in the New York Times food section.”
    “See? You don’t even try. You’re just talking to hear your head roar. One more guess.”
    “Give me a clue.”
    “It has to do with somebody being mad.”
    “The vestry. It must have something to do with the vestry.”
    “Wrong. Do you want me to tell you?”
    “I beg you.”
    “Marge Wheeler left her best basket in the kitchen after the bishop’s brunch last June, and Flora Lou Wilcox put it in the Bane and Blessing sale. Somebody walked off with it for a hundred dollars! Can you believe a hundred dollars for a basket with a loose handle? Marge is mad as a wet hen, she threatened to sue. But Flora Lou said she doesn’t have a leg to stand on, since you’re always running notices in the pew bulletin to pick up stuff left in th‘ kitchen.”
    “Ummm. Keep me posted.”
    “It’s been four months since the brunch, so I can see Flora Lou’s point that Marge should have picked it up and carted it home. Anyway, how could Flora Lou know it was handmade by Navajo Indians in 1920?” Emma sighed. “Of course, I can see Marge’s point, too, can’t you?”
    He could, but he knew better than to intervene unless asked. His job, after all, was Sales and Service.
    He rifled through the mail. A note from his cousin,