Penelope nodded acknowledgment of her niece’s pleasure, at the same time managing to include in the nod a reminder that they were poor and getting poorer, that the house they lived in, which she had inherited from her father when he died unexpectedly of yellow fever (“Not in an epidemic year; he never did anything common”), was too large and expensive to keep up for three women, or one woman and two girls.

“Five cents a pound it costs,” Penelope said, “and half melted before they get it home. We’ll have to do without this summer, except for the most terrible occasions. I declare I don’t know where it will end.”

Lauretta drank from her glass in a gulp, caught a small piece of ice in her teeth and chewed it loudly.

“Do stop that vulgar noise,” Penelope said. “You sound like a Geechee Negro chewing rock candy, and furthermore you’ll break your teeth, and I cannot afford to buy new ones for you, so you’ll have to go about with your mouth closed and never smile. And further—furthermore, it’s like chewing money. It was meant to cool the tea, not freeze your tongue.”

The meal over, Penelope had wandered restlessly about the house, doing nothing constructive, interrupting the servants at their work in the kitchen, picking at threads that then unraveled, hoping it would rain and settle the dust, but doubting aloud to herself that it would ever rain again. All of this was prologue to her snappish remark to Lauretta as she trotted through the family parlor where Sarah sat contented, or appeared so anyway, making patient, small stitches in the fabric held taut on her lap by round embroidery frames.

When the girls were alone again, Lauretta turned to her younger sister, and seeing her freshly, as Lauretta always tried to see everything, often declaring that she could not bear repetition, she laughed and said, “Honey, wake up! You look like something that’s been pressed in a Bible.”

Sarah smiled without pausing at her sewing or looking up at Lauretta. “And you,” she said with dry deliberation, “are full of schemes. You are never so giddy after supper unless you are planning mischief.”

Lauretta giggled and turned back to the window. She looked out again around the curtain, and seeing nothing yawned, although the sound of it was more like a sigh. “The Merchant of Venice is not my favorite play by Mr. Shakespeare. However—” She paused, to dare and encourage her sister to finish the thought for her, as if it were a game.

“However,” Sarah said obligingly, “you feel that Bassanio is being acted brilliantly by the handsome Mr. Douglas Savage.”

“The company moves to Atlanta in two days,” Lauretta said.

“And, in Atlanta, Mr. Savage will doubtless attract to himself the admiration of another multitude of silly girls, even as he has done in Savannah.”

“I am not silly, and I am nearly twenty.”