XIV
Sunday
Little did I think that night as I snuggled into my pillow, trying to find a comfortable spot for my sunburned shoulder, what momentous events the coming week held in store.
Sunday was quiet enough, however. Eve and I both overslept but this, Aunt Cal supposed, was no more than was to be expected after our “dissipation.” She had apparently forgotten that the dissipation had been her own suggestion. Indeed her Sunday morning severity seemed to have quite erased all traces of that softened mood I had imagined I detected yesterday.
Sunday at Aunt Cal’s had its own particular ritual. Breakfast was half an hour later, a concession to the day of rest. Or perhaps to keep us from getting too hungry for the cold dinner which followed church.
I enjoyed going to the service in the little white meeting house with its faintly musty smell, which reminded me somehow of things I had never known but which seemed curiously a part of me nevertheless. Eve said it was my New England ancestry coming out. Eve likes to dwell on the fact that her own ancestors were among the pioneers who made tracks into the western wilderness and it is to this fact that she attributes her own love of change and adventure. Though, as I pointed out to her, both our family trees probably had their roots in the same soil—so where was the difference really? It is a subject we never tire of discussing, that of ancestry and the chances of life which made us what we are!
We were talking about it that morning as we got ready for church, taking Aunt Cal as an example of what the past in the shape of tradition and custom could do for one. Aunt Cal had never spoken of her family or forbears but I felt practically certain that her direct ancestral line included a Scotch Covenanter, a Puritan preacher and one of the judges who sentenced the Salem witches to be burned!
Hattie May was at church in ruffled organdy and a floppy hat with Hamish, looking very much like a rebellious little boy in his stiff white collar. I guessed that his sister had him well in hand for the time at least.
As we walked home in the bright midday sun, one on either side of Aunt Cal, I felt as if I were taking part in a scene which had happened over and over again. Perhaps not so long ago, Aunt Cal had walked like this with her mother on Sunday morning.
As we approached Captain Trout’s cottage, the Captain himself, dressed immaculately as usual, rounded the corner of the house. “Good morning, ladies!” he swept off his blue visored cap, revealing the shining expanse of his bald head. “A beautiful day!”