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There’s a young woman in a long, old fashioned dress sitting at the Milliways piano diligently practicing her scales.

Mr. Lowell had bade Mary Bennet to please practice as she always did, offering assurances that the noise in the house would not bother him. Still, Mary felt that perhaps it would be best not to excessively inflict her practice on a captive audience. So, to Milliways she came.

Christmas is approaching in England, and a perusal of Milliways’ library for sheet music indicates that carols are going to become exceedingly popular Mary’s near future. She has an entire folder full perched on the piano--songs that are only vaguely familiar or entirely new.

It’s perched rather precariously, though, and a particularly strong vibration sends the folder sliding off the piano, across the keyboard, and into the floor, scattering pages from Joy to the Word, Silent Night, Deck the Halls, and Winter Wonderland for an impressive distance.

“Oh…….bother.”

[OOC: Around off-and-on all evening.]

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Horus considers the music as fair game for toys and starts pouncing all the pieces of music.

William sees him and sighs, he's not looking forward to stopping him with his sore elbow, "Horus."

The kitten gets much the same reaction from Mary, who is down in the floor attempting to clean up.

"Oh, Horus." She picks the kitten up and plops him in her lap. "You are not at all helpful."

"I suppose he thinks he's quite the hunter," she adds to Mr. Evans.

"Well, he is a mouser but papers ain't for huntin', Horus,"

Horus meows at them both, he was winning.

"You'll find mice to be much better eating than paper."

Mary keeps one hand firmly on the unhappy kitten while she clears up the sheet music with the other.

"Goodness, this will take ages to sort out."

What was she thinking, bringing down so many?

William's gathering what he can and trying to make sense of it all, "How many songs are there?"

"I'm not entirely sure. Half a dozen, perhaps? I fear I rather got carried away."

Mary stands. One hand is full of a mess of papers. The other hand is still on Horus, who is attempting to crawl over her shoulder and down her back.

"When I went looking in the library for Christmas music, I didn't expect to find so much of it."

"Christmas music? I didn't know there was this much before,"

He sighs and sets down some music on a table before grabbing Horus from her and putting him in his pocket though Horus is starting to get a bit big for it. Horus tries to climb his arm and William winces as claws go into his healing elbow.

"Horus, you shouldn't claw Mr. Evans. From what I've seen, he takes quite good care of you."

And by the look of things, the kitten's claws are quite sharp.

Mary puts her own handful of music on the pile on the table.

"Nor did I. We have Christmas songs at home, of course. But I've rather gathered that it gets made much more of in the future. Well, my future."

After a bit more clawing, William gets Horus on a table that doesn't have music. Then he moves his elbow, which is still sore but doesn't seem to be bleeding again,

"You stay there or else you'll go home. Looks like it does. I mean lots of folks love singin' and there's always sheet music around, but this is a lot just for Christmas."

"And there's plenty more upstairs in the library."

Mary begins sorting out the sheets.

"You haven't done yourself an injury again, have you?" she asks, nodding to William's elbow.

He seems to be favoring it a bit.

"A steer got me tangled into some scrub, its not too bad just a bit sore,"

Horus meows at them but does sit down as William goes to help with the sorting.

"Really, Mr. Evans, I'm beginning to think I wouldn't recognize you if I ever saw you when you'd not been battered a bit."

Not that it's his fault, of course, but William does seem to get more than his share of bumps and bruises.

"Do you have any pages to something called Winter Wonderland?"

Edited 2012-05-14 01:58 (UTC)

"I ain't that bad. Yeah, I do," His work is just rather physical and he has a bad habit of doing more than he should.

"Thank you."

Mary takes the sheets and puts them neatly in order.

"And yes, you rather are," she says with a faint smile. "Either fighting or knocked about while working."

"That's just the nature of young men, I suppose."

Goodness knows, they have evidence of that living in their spare room.

"Must be cause I've never seen you not lookin' all put together,"

As the music is arranged, he moves over to pet Horus and give him some jerky as he was good and stayed.

"Well, in many ways, ladies are held to a much more rigid standard."

Ladies, for example, are not expected to tangle with steers.

"It's just expected that we'll always be in order."

"Yeah, you are. Well, I mean we are too just differently. Like I'd get in trouble if I was too much of a mess or drunk."

"With your mother?"

Mary has no experience with having brothers, but she imagines that if she did and they strayed too far from the straight and narrow, Mrs. Bennet would have something to say about it.

"Yeah, I would and don't want to get our family into trouble,"

Folks already have enough stories about the Evans' family, they don't need more.

"Well, of course. Reputation is very important."

Even on the American frontier, she'd imagine.

"But I don't think there'd ever be a need to worry over that. You are a fundamentally good person, so you'd never go over to the bad."

"Maybe but my family got tangled up with an outlaw and it makes folks suspicious,"

Horus meows and bumps his head against William's handd for some pets. He knows that's not a good tone of voice.

"That is the sort of thing society would have a very hard time forgiving," Mary admits.

No matter how good an individual may be, consorting with criminals is going to tarnish one's reputation. There's little point in pretending otherwise.

"At least in England. I imagine it's the same in Arizona?"

"Perhaps in time your name will be restored."

It can happen.

"Wade did get on the train, but it was all just a mess. It ain't so much about forgivin' as folks don't know. One of the things the other boys like teasin' me about is Wade helpin' us out which he ain't,"

It just works because its a tender point to know that if it wasn't for Wade, his father would be alive but they also would have lost their land.

"Oh, I despise people who idly gossip. Especially about thing that hurt others."

"People always say it should just be ignored, but it can be impossible to do so."

"Yeah, but they do. They're the hardest ones to not hit."

"Well, you really shouldn't hit them."

Mary will concede to hitting people in defense, but that's as far as she's managed to go.

"You just give them all the more to gossip about."

"I know and I'm not as much,"

He is trying and getting better.

"That's good."

She'd hate to see him any more beaten up than he already seems to be on a semi-routine basis.

"Do people duel in America? In your part?"

Not that she's advocating this as an alternative, but she's curious.

"Sort of but not too often. Callin' a gunfight a duel makes it sound neater than it is."

"Men duel at home. Especially when it comes to matters of honor. As I understand it, though, they rarely aim to kill. It's more a public means of expressing displeasure."

It's one of those things that makes sense to the male mind.

"I think they more often hurt each other when swords are involved, but you don't hear of that nearly as much as you used to."

"I've read about those sorts of duels in books but never seen one out my way. I guess you could call some fistfights duels but still don't really fit,"

It seems like fancy words around a fight to William.

"No. I think a fistfight is.....a fistfight."

She wouldn't call such a thing a duel either.

"Fistfights, as I understand them, happen in the heat of the moment. Duels require a bit more self-control."

Just to wait until an appointed time.

"Yeah, closest you get to that is some gunfights but those are more like fistfights just worse. Books make 'em sound all nice and clean when they ain't."

Mary gives him a look. As if something has just occurred to her.

"You don't gunfight, do you?"

"No, I've been in 'em, but won't start one. My Pa taught me and Mark how to shoot and we're both better shots than most men in Bisbee, but don't go lookin' for that sort of trouble,"

He's seen where that road can lead you and doesn't want it.

"Well, I'm very glad to hear that."

She'd really take it quite amiss if he got himself killed.

"Just to be in one must be terrifying enough."

"It is, hard to know what's goin' on but you have to focus or else you could end up hurtin' yourself."

"I think I'd be more concerned about being hurt by the other parties involved."

The parties that would be shooting at you.

"Yeah, that too, it's just a mess but that's how most fights are."

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