An Undisturbed Peace by Mary Glickman

nod. “I’m not certain they need so many trinkets and notions!” His voice dropped to a near whisper as if the women in question were huddled on the other side of the door, listening. “Just two days ago, they moaned and moaned at dinner yet again. ‘Where is that handsome young peddler,’ they said, ‘and why has he not yet come on his spring call?’ Tired of it all, I muttered that a coyote or a bobcat must have eaten you and suggested they hunt for your remains. What a tumult erupted! My wife knocked on the table three times and threw salt over her shoulder while denouncing me for making dire predictions sure to attract evil to our own hearth and home. At the same time, the girls covered their eyes and wailed as if they’d just discovered the indigestible bits of your body in the herb garden.” Milner stopped to puff up his chest to underscore how firmly he’d been required to react. “I pounded the table, first with my fist and then with my hobnailed boot, to quiet them. The next night none would speak to me at dinner. My meat was burnt and dry and two nights in a row, my wife failed to warm the sheets on my side of the bed. The girls would not so much as bid me good night. Had I not spied your fat pony riding up the road this morning, I would have thrown myself at their mercies. Anything to end that silence! I’m telling you, lad, there are few conditions that can unman a fellow faster than a houseful of disappointed women!”
    Abe was not sure anymore if he was excited or afraid to enter the house, a well-kept structure of milled lumber with paned glass windows, evidence of Milner’s modest success. He half expected to be devoured by ravenous harpies. But as they entered the foyer, all he saw of the girls was the backs of their skirts as their mother, Esther, shooed them into the kitchen, presumably to allow the men to conduct their business and so clear the way for the more important social congress that lay ahead. When the former was accomplished, Tobias Milner raised his voice loud enough for the entire household to hear, saying, “Let’s shake on it then.” Within seconds, his daughters appeared and swept into the chairs awaiting them while their mother offered tea. The charm of their flowery scents and the soft rustle of their skirts filled Abe with bittersweet sentiment. All this trouble for me, he thought, while Marian treats me as if I could be replaced in a heartbeat and in the next, forgotten. He rose from his chair briefly to greet the women with respect.
    â€œYou will, of course, spend the night with us?” Tobias Milner asked. “You could give all the news from Greensborough.”
    â€œThank you for your kind offer,” Abe said “But I must be off before dark, Mr. Milner. I lost a week or two coming here for various reasons. I need to make up for time lost.”
    The three Milner daughters were sitting across from him in a row of precisely equidistant straight-backed chairs. Colored ribbons threaded through the braids of their hair, their cheeks were pinched pink, and their hands were folded demurely in their laps. Despite their studied similitude, each delivered protest to his leave-taking in her own manner. Bekka, the plump pretty one, tapped her little feet lightly against the floor and whispered, “No!” Judith, the serious one, furrowed her brow and shot him a wounded look from her great blue eyes, fluttering a delicate hand over her breast and going so far as to feign the blinking back of tears. Hannah, the youngest, grabbed a lock of her auburn hair and stuck it in her mouth to stifle an anguished cry.
    â€œI never would have marked you as a cruel lad, Abrahan,” their father said, knocking his pipe out against the fireplace. “My daughters have such little company. You cannot deny them the pleasure of yours for a mere evening.”
    From out the corner of his eye, Abe spied their mother at