Free First Papers by Laura Z. Hobson Page A

fortunate it had been to find such people living a few minutes’ walk away.
    “A tree introduced us,” Evan had once said, and it had become a standing jest between the two families. In fact it had been during the final days of building the house that they had met each other, only days after the trees had been planted. One afternoon, when the plasterers were near the end of their task, she and Stefan had walked up the hill from their rented house in the village, and had found two people examining one of the young maples whose trunks were scarcely three inches across inside their swathing of burlap. The man was bending over almost to the ground, his head cocked near the slender trunk, as if he were listening for a heartbeat. On his face was such concern, and in his whole attitude so lively an interest, that Stefan said, “Is anything wrong with it?”
    There was a hint of pleasure in Stefan’s voice, and Alexandra knew he was pleased to find two nice-looking strangers pausing over his property. She herself had experienced a tingle of satisfaction, almost of importance, as if the three young maples were her children, and talented enough to draw warm attention from passers-by.
    At Stefan’s question, the man had straightened up, removing his hat, smiling, and saying, “Are you the owners of this house?”
    “Yes,” Stefan had said, putting out his hand and bowing a little from the waist in the ceremonious way that always came back when he was meeting people for the first time. “Stefan Ivarin, sir, and my wife Alexandra.”
    “And I’m Evander Paige,” Evan had said, grasping Stefan’s hand warmly. “This is my wife, Alida.”
    In the instant of speaking and shaking hands all round, in the ready smile on Evan’s and Alida’s faces, Alexandra had felt a promise of friendship. Evan was tall and spare, with a narrow gaunt face that reminded her of descriptions of New England farmers, or of Owen Wister’s Virginian. His wife was small and thin, still pretty, though she was perhaps the same age as Alexandra. Her blond hair had scarcely any grey in it and Alexandra instantly noted that her navy-blue serge suit swept to her ankles with no bulge anywhere.
    “I’m worried about your maple,” Evan Paige was saying to Stefan. “We were just passing and I heard the wire singing.”
    “Off key, I take it?” Stefan said at once, and both the Paiges laughed and looked at him once again.
    “Very much so,” Evan replied. “It’s much looser than the others and if this wind rises, the tree could be wrenched loose by the unequal stress.”
    “It’s very kind of you, sir,” Stefan said, “to trouble about a strange tree.”
    “It won’t be a stranger long,” Alida had put in. It was a kindly voice and Alexandra’s heart opened to it. “We pass here every day. Our house is just over there, on Charming Street.” She gestured toward it and smiled at both of them. “As soon as you move in, we must visit each other.”
    Then and there, the visiting had begun. When Stefan said he had designed the house himself, Evan seemed impressed and asked to be shown through it; in the empty rooms, their voices rang and echoed, their steps resounded. The Paiges had ended by inviting them to return home with them, and over tea (served in cups) their talk had soon turned to the Inaugural speech William Howard Taft had made the week before. It was Evander Paige’s phrase, “Taft’s usual tariff promises,” spoken with a dry irony, that led Stefan to say, “We seem to feel the same way about many of these matters.”
    “I voted for Debs,” Evan replied. “The third time since Nineteen Hundred.”
    “My dear sir,” Stefan said, “I greet you again. I’ve been a socialist since I was a boy of seventeen in Odessa.” He rose and put out his hand once again to Evan. Evan rose too, and they stood there shaking hands as if each was congratulating the other.
    Watching them, Alexandra and Alida Paige smiled at each other like