PART SIX
An amateur naturalist of no small distinction, the governess from Boston was also a keen observer of human psychology and, in consequence, an advocate for women's rights. Five years of single-handedly providing the headmaster's eight daughters with an education that included calculus and two classical languages while a specialized sixty-member faculty drew praise and honor in her hearing for providing boys with somewhat less had done nothing to dampen her interest in the Cause. She was aware of the headmaster's intentions and deeply unsympathetic towards his hopes--in fact they enraged her. She had no desire to marry in any case: she wanted to found a school.

Doctor Horace Greenwich, like his ancestors, kept pigs, maintaining this tradition out of familial respect despite his distaste for the animals themselves, which he rather dreaded (his childhood journals are more explicit on this point than those of later years), although he loved their roasted flesh. He was delighted when the governess from Boston volunteered to teach his daughters how to feed the pigs; she promised fatter, firmer pigs than he'd been getting, and she was as good as her word: the three he chose at the sty for slaughtering and roasting and serving at the Autumn Banquet were extraordinary specimens, by all accounts. Constance imagines the meeting house as it must have been that night, brilliantly-lit; the tables heavy-laden with wine and game and the magnificent pork; the walls resounding with the voices of men all talking in jovial tones about the new century; and Doctor Horace Greenwich himself with the carving knife at the head table, smilingly offering his smiling father the choicest cut.

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