Whipple's Castle by Thomas Williams

up too high and forget it. If she could find just the right level to keep the dark orange flame, so dangerously boiling behind the dim isinglass window—not too high, not too low—her mother might not fool with the stove at all, and there wouldn’t be too much danger. Once it had gone out because her mother turned it down too low, and it flooded, and then when her mother threw a match into it, it got so hot the enamel smoked and cracked, the wall behind it began to smoke, and they had to go outside and watch through the door while it decided not to bum the house down. The brown soap on the sink had melted, and the isinglass window turned so black Peggy had to buy some new stove mica, and cut it with a scissors so it would fit.
    She trimmed the greasy wick of the lamp, wiped the carbon out of the chimney with a brown paper bag, then set it low for her mother, so she would be able to find a windowlight through the deep snow. It was still snowing, and in the morning she would have to shovel a path to the outhouse and to the pump. When the Whipple boys had finished their driveway and walks they would come shoveling up the road, where she would meet them partway. They would joke and laugh and maybe have a mock snowball fight, and Wood might say, “Have you had breakfast? Come down with us and have some flapjacks—all that shoveling makes you hungry!” She would stick her shovel in the snow and follow them down the crisp path, marching, their shovels over their shoulders like guns, Wood calling out, “Hup two three four, hup two three four!” Then they would burst into the big, warm kitchen where Mrs. Whipple and Kate were pouring thick yellow batter on the hissing griddle, and the windows would be all steam. “Look what we found in the snow! It’s little Peggy from the woods, come to have breakfast with us!” That might be David who said that, and Horace would be so pleased he’d smile at her, and Mrs. Whipple would wipe her hands on her apron and come over to her, smiling, and put her warm hands on Peggy’s cold cheeks…
    The flame wouldn’t do what she wanted it to. She would have to clean the pipe that dripped oil into the pot. Tomorrow she would do this; she would take the copper wire and clean it out. Not tonight, because it would take too long for the stove to cool, and it was too cold a night. She was shivery anyway.
    â€œI’m lonesome for the Whipples!” she said out loud, somewhat surprised to hear her own voice. Her eyes were suddenly wet. She recognized her self-pity, and named it. “But I am!” she said. “I don’t care, I am!” She didn’t even know why they let her stay in their house. She didn’t do any more housework than Mrs. Whipple or Kate. She worked as hard as she could for them, but they didn’t really need her. Last year when her mother had pneumonia she stayed in the Whipples’ house for a whole week, and got up and went to school with Kate. To walk to school with Kate Whipple! There were girls who came up High Street, the long way, just in case they might meet Kate on the way to school, and arrive with her. If two others walked with Kate, Kate was always in the middle, and the other two always looked as if they were following her—in waiting upon her. Kate was never mean—she didn’t have to be. Sometimes she hurt people, but she couldn’t help it; everyone was a little frightened by her, and they would do awkward, silly things. Boys would suddenly yell or throw stones at each other, or drop-kick their books, and girls would make horrible faces, or pretend to be imbeciles.
    Peggy always wondered, even with a feeling of guilt, why Kate was so nice to her. Guilt because she could see no reason for it. She had done nothing to deserve it, had no talents, no good points about her. If anything, she was a total liability to Kate, and yet Kate always seemed to keep a protective eye on her. All