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different ways. But five years ago, when Lowell’s father had died, and he had brought his family to Clarkton—at first only for a short and indeterminate period—there was Elliott Abbott with the solid, tiring practice of a small-town doctor, a monstrously big, gray-haired man, who softly and caustically reacted to life as it came; and quite naturally they saw a good deal of each other. Out of that, without any urging on the part of either, they became very close and good friends.
    In part, it was the result of Lois’ necessity to have some sort of social life in Clarkton. Her snobbery was fiercely self-controlled, self-resisted, but present nevertheless and fanned by the nature of a factory town that revolved around a single factory. The town was stratified, the more rigidly for the very fact that the citizens never considered the lamination as such. Roughly, there were three classes: the workers, who formed the large majority of the population, who were native New England, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Negro, and Jewish, with a sprinkling of French Canadian: the middle class, shopkeepers, garage owners, insurance agents, real estate agents, the lumberyard owner, a good many foremen in the plant, assistant managers, the brickyard owner, two of the five lawyers, all—including Elliott Abbott—of the six doctors, and a good many of the thirty-two persons who served the nineteen churches in one capacity or another; and these, and others not specified, fell into patterns of national origin similar to. those of the workers: and finally, there was what considered itself in Clarkton the upper class, the two plant managers, the local bankers—five, including vice-presidents—three of the five lawyers, which included a judge, the president of Sparkling Light, a small plant that bottled soda for all that part of Massachusetts, and half a dozen more, but not all of these firmly stratified, not all of these permanently accepted.
    Their delight at having the younger Lowells back was all too apparent; they took them to their bosoms, but Lois had no desire to be taken, and Lowell himself was made uneasy and uncomfortable. He had never before been placed in a situation where he had to reject social advances, nor had he ever been really conscious of such a desire. He left it to Lois, who managed it well or badly, depending on how you looked at it; but for her it was a necessity, as much as it was a necessity to retain the one person in town she felt easy and comfortable with, Elliott Abbott. Their closeness to the Abbotts grew as the gulf between them and the highest strata of Clarkton widened. The two large—and for the town, exciting—events in the more or less regular flow of their wartime lives, the death of their son, Clark, and the expulsion of their daughter, Fern, from Bennington College, were received in a sort of balance. After the first, there was much formal sympathy—to none of which the Lowells appeared to respond in more than desultory fashion; thereby, after the second, there was considerable satisfaction as well as gossip, much of it vicious, much of it utterly without foundation in any of the facts; but the edge was taken off because the Lowells were able to pursue their lives in precisely the same pattern as before. But there was no doubt but that these two events, along with the war, along with the deep friendship between Lowell and Abbott, as well as between Lois and Ruth Abbott, helped keep the Lowells in the big old colonial house, which was situated on Concord Way, three miles beyond the mill-pond and the plant.

10. T he first sip of his martini began a process of relaxation in Lowell; the warmth trickled down and spread. Abbott made a toast, “ Salud! ” “If I had known that you would be here, Elliott,” Fern said, “I would not have made a date, I would not have budged. It would have taken dynamite.” The drink brought Lowell home. He was very