A Radical Arrangement by Jane Ashford

began to curve her lips.
    How her friends would gape. And her parents—they would flatly refuse to believe it. When she imagined their stunned faces, Margaret laughed aloud.
    “I’m glad to see ye so merry,” said a voice above her head. “Your brother must be better, then.”
    Startled, Margaret looked up. Her path had wound through the village to a point she recognized, and Mrs. Dowling leaned out of her cottage window overhead. “Tell the joke,” added the old woman. “I could use a laugh this morning, and no mistake.”
    “There’s no joke,” replied Margaret. “I was just…” And with this, she realized what she had been doing—laughing at her parents—and was silenced.
    “Well, well,” said Mrs. Dowling. “Wait a minute, and I’ll come down and let you in.”
    “Oh, no, I’m going to the beach,” answered Margaret, but Mrs. Dowling was already gone. She could hear the door latch being lifted. Margaret stirred uneasily. She had not quite gotten over her first reaction to Mrs. Dowling, despite the old woman’s help and patent goodwill. Every time she saw her, she was irresistibly reminded of a witch, and she could not shake off the notion that there was something sinister about her, though she had told herself a hundred times that this was silly.
    “Come in, come in,” urged Mrs. Dowling, holding her door open insistently. Margaret tried to make some excuse, but it was brushed aside, and she found herself in the cottage, being ushered through a narrow hall to the back of the building. “We’ll sit outside,” added her hostess. “It bain’t hot yet.”
    She opened another door at the rear of the house and waved Margaret through. At the threshold, the girl paused and drew in a startled breath. Mrs. Dowling’s simple cottage was graced with a tiny terrace at the back, a simple flagged square bordered by a low stone wall on three sides. Flowering shrubs in pots sat on this wall, and the ocean spread out far below in a gorgeous panorama. It was the last sort of place she would have expected to find here, and she turned to look at the old woman with new eyes.
    “This is where I hang my laundry,” said the latter complacently as she followed Margaret out. “And we used to sit here of an evening, Bob and me, afore he died.”
    “Y-your husband?”
    She nodded. “And a good one too. He was lost off a fishing boat in ninety-nine. He liked this place, he did.” She looked around the terrace. “Took care of the flowers.”
    Fascinated, Margaret followed her glance, all her ideas about Mrs. Dowling undergoing hurried revision. “It’s lovely.”
    “It is that.” Mrs. Dowling moved to the wall and sat down next to a bush of scarlet blossoms. She patted the stone next to her. “Sit here, dearie. I’ve som’at to say to you.”
    Surprised, Margaret obeyed.
    Her hostess did not speak at once, but rather looked out to sea as if she had forgotten her request. Finally she said, “Men be odd creatures. Very odd.”
    Margaret stared at her, and Mrs. Dowling turned slightly and met her eyes. “They don’t think like us,” she continued. “They get a maggot in their heads and run mad over a thing that any woman would shrug off in an instant. How I used to laugh at my Bob—when he wasn’t looking, of course—and how we used to brangle about some of his odd notions.”
    “D-did you?” Margaret was at a loss.
    “That we did.” Mrs. Dowling grinned, and Margaret had a sudden vision of a much younger woman with wicked, dancing eyes. “And how we made up for it afterward!”
    Margaret’s eyes grew wider. No one had ever spoken to her like this about men, certainly not her mother. Indeed, she had formed very few opinions about the sex beyond the stark division between good and bad inculcated very early. But Mrs. Dowling’s remarks and tone seemed to imply that there was a great deal more to know, and Margaret found herself intrigued. “Your husband was a fisherman?” she asked, trying to