Chapter 6 Summary

From the time Mary is a little girl, Vera emphasizes how she cannot do without her as a helpmate and how like her late mother she is. She never wants Mary to marry and keeps her too busy with chores to meet a man. Mary meets Stan Thomas while organizing a community picnic on Fort Niles to be given by Vera to show off to relatives from abroad. Stan is taken by Mary's pretty face and figure, insists on getting retail prices for his lobsters, but offers his service gratis in organizing and helping to run. Weather turns the party into a fiasco and, after cleaning up, Mary takes Stan to Ellis House, where they sit in the kitchen with Edith, the cook. Mary, of course, is summoned by Vera, but Edith fills Stan in on her tragic life's history and oppressed situation...