The group began walking further toward the dining room. Lydia still couldn't believe her eyes at her husband's reaction. She tugged on his arm as they walked and pulled him back. William and Eliza continued on down the hall, oblivious that the other two stopped.

"Do you realize it?" Lydia asked. Her husband looked around and then back at his wife.

"Realize what, exactly?" Arthur questioned.

"Lydia isn't just an acquaintance he'd brought here. They've been having an affair." Lydia presumed she was informing Arthur. She expected him to have outrage. All this time she assumed that he was just as she was. But now she realizes it wasn't so.

William always had romantic ideas when it came to people. He always seemed to have a particular soft spot for the negro people of the small town. It didn't shock anyone too much that he'd run off to New York City. But now finding that Arthur, too, was similar to William in his nature toward colored people baffled Lydia.

Was this the man she married?

"I just wanted to ensure you understood." Lydia said softly and with disappointment. She did not get the outrage she sought from her husband.

"What's not to understand?" Arthur asked his wife. He looked down into her eyes with that particular look that she hated. The one that sympathizers such as he and William gave to women like her. Ones who, as she saw it were not hateful as many of those saps suggested, but simply wanted to keep the order. It seemed like the world was turning on its head lately.

When Lydia and Arthur entered the dining room, there stood Connor and Bunny. Lydia stepped forward toward them. "Connor, no surprise to see you've returned with William."

"Connor!" Arthur greeted him with a bear hug. Lydia stood coldly as she watched the men embrace, forcing a smile with folded hands in front of her.

Her eyebrow rose as she set her eyes on Bunny, the short and round addition to the men. "And who may I ask this is."

"I go by Bunny." He held out a hand toward her. Lydia stared at the hand, then reluctantly gripped it. She practically shook his hand off of hers by the end of the handshake.

After lifting her nose in the air she took a glimpse at Eliza, who stood next to William. She was filled with envy seeing William's hand around Eliza's waist.

Once they got to the table, he pulled out a chair for Eliza and slowly she took a seat in it. Almost simultaneously Arthur pulled out a chair for Lydia and she sunk into her seat. The men both pushed their partners in and then took their own seats next to them. Bunny and Connor both sat next to one another beside William.

"Is your, uh, is your dad joining us?" Connor whispered. A grin spread on William's face.

"I highly doubt it." He whispered.

"Well!" Florence's voice called the attention of all who sat at the table. "Everyone's already gotten settled."

Florence took the seat at the head of the table, the one usually reserved for her husband. Everyone stared as she settled in, and she did it casually as though there was no error in her actions. Then she looked up at everyone and flashed a smile, her lips covered in orange-red lipstick. "Shall we begin?"

William, Arthur and Connor became especially reacquainted in their conversations. Initially, the three reminisced on their younger years. Florence scoffed playfully as they spoke about it. "Please, as though you all are so old."

"Mother, you're especially young!" William laughed, and the rest of the table joined in.

Florence playfully patted her red hair. "Well I am, aren't I?" Eliza pressed her hand on her chest as she let out a laugh. William noticed Eliza becoming more comfortable with the group. With warm eyes he held her hand on the table for a moment, then picked up his utensils and ate some more.

Lydia buzzed in and cut the laughter that crackled across the table. Her attention was held on William. "All this talk about the past, you've yet to ask how Arthur and I came to be."

"Came to be?" William asked, then remembered the status of their marriage. "Oh, yes."

He cleared his throat in reaction to Lydia's awkward topic, Connor and Bunny cackled in response. "How'd this happen? I mean— How did you two become one, should I ask." William smiled.

"Arthur had courted me for a while." Lydia held onto her husband's hand. "And I just thought he was the best man in town at that time. So when he asked me to go canoeing with him, I couldn't refuse! Well, after singing some songs and a little bit of petting, I couldn't deny I was his. Within a year we were wed, and it's been bliss ever since."

There was a silence at the table for a moment. Arthur chimed in, "You missed that chapter."

Everyone began to laugh once again. Lydia didn't enjoy the story of her marriage being taken so lightly. She also didn't enjoy how William continuously showed affection to Eliza throughout the night. Lightly he rubbed her back at moments, other times he touched her shoulder, he couldn't seem to his hands off of her!

Lydia stood up from the table and walked off. Everyone noticed her immediate exit. Arthur stood up from his seat. "If you'll excuse me."

He followed Lydia into a hall and she recognized her husband's footsteps behind her. "If she isn't the most vulgar creature I've ever seen!"

"Vulgar?" Arthur followed behind Lydia. "She seems lovely to me."

"Of course to you. Men seemed to have simply lost their minds lately. The order has simply crumbled." Lydia huffed.

"The order, the order." Arthur repeated. "Things are changing. We're in the 20th century, why is it that you hold onto such ideas?"

"In nature there is such thing as order. From sun rise to sun set, to the bees who land on each plant. Order is how the world operates!" Lydia stepped up to her husband.

"And who is to say that their union is against nature?" Arthur asked, placing his hands on Lydia's shoulders.

"Of course it is." Lydia told her husband as she allowed him to wrap him in a hug. Arthur stroked her shoulder with his thumb.. "I just don't understand what everyone sees in her. And I especially didn't expect you to see anything in her."

"She seems like an upstanding girl." Arthur rose his eyebrows while his chin rested on her blonde crown.

"She seems like a flapper tramp." Lydia complained. "And I'm especially baffled at you. You never were kindred to people like that."

"We've never discussed it." Arthur told her. "I have never been involved in the organizations your father has been involved in."

"I never thought you'd opposed the idea of decency within the human race!" Lydia argued. "When did you become so weak?"