Cousin Jane Turnstable was a tall woman with silvery hair caught up smoothly under a broad hat. Her eyebrows were black and her face had all over the same unwrinkled milky texture as her cheeks. The boy and girl were both blonde and very thin. They all stood in a group in the center of the buff and blue carpet of the parlor, and the voices of the Turnstables chimed softly together like well attuned bells against Nan's deep voice and the quavering voice of her aunt.
"Nancibel, you won't mind showing Cousin Jane and Cousin Helen where they can take their things off, will you dear?" said Aunt M. At the same moment Mary Ann came through the sliding doors that led to the dining room and announced solemnly: "Dinner's on the table, mum."
"This is nice," said Aunt M. when they were all seated round the table where amid a glitter of silverware the creases stood up stiffly in the heavily starched linen cloth: "Quite like old times." And as Nan let the brown croutons slide off the spoon into the tomato bisque a heartbreaking lassitude came over her—I'm twentyeight and every seventh day of my life I must have done this. Twentyeight by fiftytwo, what does that make? But some one was speaking to her. "And how did you enjoy September at Squirrel Island?" Cousin Jane Turnstable was asking in her musical voice.
After dinner with the thickness of overrich icecream still in their mouths they went into the parlor for coffee.
"I suppose I shall never go abroad again," Aunt M. was saying. "My travelling days are over. But if I did it would be to take for one last time that drive from Sorrento to Amalfi when the lemontrees are in bloom.... I'm afraid it is a little blasphemous to say it, but I can't imagine Heaven more beautiful. You surely have taken that drive, Nancibel."
"I've never been south of Florence, Auntie." With bitter poignance she sat remembering the smell of lemontrees. She was moving the spoon round her small cup of coffee with a slow movement of long fingers. She thought of Fitzie eating banana split and telling about the girl who'd run off with an Italian smelling of garlic like a young Greek god. Poor Fitzie who had none of that in her life, always making up romances for other people.
"I seem to remember," Aunt M. went on, "having heard Philips Brooks say that no one could really feel the beauty of such sights and remain an unbeliever."
"Ah, yes, so true," said Cousin Jane Turnstable.
"O dear," said James, his voice breaking.
Nan looked up at him suddenly. His face was crimson. He had spilt half a cup of coffee over his neatlypressed grey trousers. Nan took the cup out of his hand and set it on the mantel while he sheepishly fumbled for the spoon on the floor.