“They married.”
“But more than that,” warmly. “He carved the most wonderful figureheads for my great grandfather’s ships. All over the world they were famous. His son was my father.”
It was indescribable, the tone in which she said the last. It told more than anything else how dearly she loved this sculptor father of hers. That night Jean wrote to Kit. The letter on her arrival had been to the Motherbird, but this was a chat with the circle she knew would read it over around the sitting room lamp.
Dear Kit:
I know you’ll all be hungry for news. We motored out from Boston, and child, when I saw the quaint old New England homestead we had imagined, I had to blink my eyes. It looks as if it belonged right out on the North Shore at the Cove. It is a little like Longfellow’s home, only glorified—not by fame as yet, though that will come—by Greek wings. I don’t mean Nike wings. There are sweeping porticos on each side where the drive winds around. And inside it is summertime even now. They have flowers everywhere, and raise roses. Kit, if you could get one whiff of their conservatory, you would become a Persian rose worshipper. When I come back, we’re going to start a sunken rose garden, not with a few old worn out bushes, but new slips and cuttings.
Carlota arrived the day after I did. She looks like the little statuette of Le Brun on Mother’s bookcase, only her hair hangs in two long braids. She is more Italian than American in her looks, but seems to be very proud of her American father. Helen would love her ways. She has a maid, Pippa, from Florence, middle-aged, who used to be her nurse. Isn’t that medieval and Juliet-like? But she wears black and white continually, no gorgeous raiment at all, black in the daytime, white for evening. I feel like Pierrette beside her, but Cousin Beth says the girls of our age dress very simply abroad.
The Contessa is coming out to spend the week end with us, and will take Carlota and me back with her for a few days. I’ll tell you all about her next time. We go for a long trip in the car every day, but it is awfully cold and bleak still. I feel exactly like Queen Bess, the Angora cat, I want to hug the fires all the time, and Carlota says she can’t bear our New England winters. At this time of the year, she says spring has come in Tuscany and all along the southern coast. She has inherited her father’s gift for modelling, and gave me a little figurine of a fisher boy standing on his palms, for a paper weight. It is perfect. I wish I could have it cast in bronze. You know, I think I’d rather be a sculptor than a painter. Someway the figures seem so full of life, but then, Cousin Beth says, they lack color.
I mustn’t start talking shop to you when your head is full of forestry. Let me know how Piney takes to the idea of going west, and be sure and remember to feed Cherilee. Dorrie will think of her chickens and neglect the canary sure. And help Mother all you can.
With love to all,
Jean.