"Did he say so?" she remarked soberly. "Well, perhaps he was right." And she took the children by the hand and went out.
And we had them back in the evening, which became uproarious. My friend greeted them dressed up as Santa Claus, with an immense cotton-wool beard and motor-goggles. We initiated them into the mysteries of Hunt the Slipper and Musical Chairs. Indeed, when neighbours began to drop in, as they did later on, they interrupted five children playing Nuts in May. Foolish old parlour-tricks we had forgotten since our own early childhood came back to memory and evoked shrieks of laughter. At ten, when I took them, well wrapped up, down our snow-trench and along the sidewalk to their own door, they were in a trance of mingled happiness and fatigue.
"Here they are, safe, Mrs. Carville," I said as she opened the door, "but very sleepy."
"You are very kind," she said. "They must go to bed. But you will come in, and drink a glass of wine? No?"
"Yes," I said, suddenly pushing aside the diffidence that years of literature had bred. "Yes, I will take a glass of wine with you, Mrs. Carville. To the coming year."
"Oh, but," she said, laughing over her shoulder as she led the way into the parlour, "Have you the gift of good fortune that you bring to me for this next year? I hope you have. Here is the wine. My husband gets it when he goes to Ancona. The wine of Umbria. You like it?"
"To next year," I said as she filled two glasses from a large wickered flask. "And what is left of this," I added. She sat on a white chair in front of a wall covered with books, a brilliant, tragic, yet smiling figure of a beautiful woman, charming in the kindly coquetry of the moment. For that is how I interpreted her mood, that she divined my diffidence with feminine quickness and sought innocently enough to help me along. And I made up my mind to take the chance, should it appear, and warn her of what we had feared. She would take it from me, knowing of my diffidence. As she sat there, she filled one of my ideals; the robust and beautiful mother. I will have none of your pale, puling madonnas. I have never been under the influence of women, but I delight in them tall and strong and with the splendid beauty of health and maturity. Against her husband's books, which made a background of colour and gold like old tapestry for her head, she was a wonderful complexity of vigorous, abounding life and still decorative outline. She turned and looked at me after setting down her glass and found me watching her. She smiled in a friendly way.
"You know," she said, "we have bought a home on Staten Island? Well, when we are fixed, you will come and see us—when my husband is home. You will, all?"
"I will anyhow," I said. "I like your husband and I like your two boys, and...."
"And me?" she inquired with a smile that pursed her lips. "You no like me?" I laughed.