Catherine's thriving. And no longer interrupts their sleep constantly, it's great. He hasn't turned up reversible options for birth control that don't involve Rebecca sinning but he really hopes they get a couple years' break. 

Rebecca knows all the Church-approved and not-Church-approved-but-Rebecca-approved workarounds like "nurse a lot" and "the rhythm method" and "I guess technically you would be committing onanism, not me, right?" and "I'm going to confession tomorrow anyway" and is not pregnant yet!

It's great! He's not sure why one should even have a religion if they're going to rules-lawyer it mostly away but it makes her happy and keeps things interesting so that's all right. 

His siblings come home.

There are hugs.

There are! Miranda has left Cricket outside so he won't harass Timothy.

"You'd think I'd have earned some credit for introducing him to you," Timothy says when this is explained.

"Cricket's hatred is deep and irrational. If it helps, he also hates Madeline for her taste in earrings."

"I suppose my wounded pride will eventually be soothed. How've you been?"

"Pretty good. Whenever you have a minute I have a nefarious plot question."

"I'd be delighted." And a minute is found not that much later.

"Are you planning on getting married at some point - y'know, um, anyway?"

"Yes."

"D'you think you'd get on with Karen."

"Uh, is she looking for -"

"She's the same - thing - why are there not words - she wouldn't mind if you carried on with Fredrick or anything, either - but the problem is Minor knows about her -"

"That is a problem, yes - what does he know - the word is 'sodomite' -"

"I thought girls couldn't be sodomites? I've never heard anybody call a girl one - Uh, technically all he knows is she's in love with me."

"I don't know what girls are called. Uh, she could be both, in principle, that's a thing."

"Does Minor know that, though."

"Someone could endeavor to bring it to his attention. Michael might be maneuverable into that, he was covering for a couple girls at school -"

"You could probably maneuver him, then, sure. I asked Fredrick if it would in principle be okay to mention to a hypothetical girl whatever-girls-are-called and he said yeah if I was sure of her but I think I managed to ask her if it was okay to tell about her without her guessing who I wanted to tell, so if you don't find a way to line it up you can leave it be, but. Better than potioning it?"

"Yeah, the potions are all unnervingly priorities-distorting."

Nod.

"I will attempt maneuvering. - thank you -"

"You're welcome. If you wind up marrying her you have to say 'I should never have doubted it would have been all right to tell you everything, Miranda'."