That trio became a regular grouping each morning from nine o’clock until near noon, and when lessons were done, Selma and Pauline usually remained, thereby gradually establishing that end of the porch as their special place, just as the other end of it was acknowledged to belong to Penelope and Nell. The latter, assured that their rights were respected, were not averse to being amused by company and ceased talking altogether when lessons were in progress.

Although certain general rules and customs were observed, it was not a formal household, and impromptu conferences were frequently held on the porch. If Lovey found Sarah there, resting or even pausing briefly, and wanted to decide a question, she did so. Others were sent to Sarah there, or to Lovey when she drew up a chair beside Sarah and extended her stay.

Although it was not to be until the middle of October, Rachel’s wedding cast a long backward shadow into the summer. There were a thousand details to settle, and the front porch was the coolest convenient place for such matters. There Sarah and Rachel had preliminary discussions with the minister and the choirmaster, with dressmakers, with advisers of every sort, long known or previously unknown, who seem to spring up from nowhere around such events to give advice that sounds more like a laying down of laws.

Not much real law was practiced in summer, and so Adam was often hanging about Rachel when it was too hot for them to seek privacy by walking or riding to the glade. There was no division between the business and the social; this merging was a part of the easy democracy of the South in those days. If someone suddenly suggested it, watermelons were brought from the bricked artesian well and set on the floor of the porch. Adam or Leon—the job, although it required neither strength nor special skill with a knife, usually fell to a man—found himself standing in the front yard and using the porch as a table, as he cut watermelons into sections for Rachel, and a lace merchant—a popular alto singer of love songs who was to help provide a suitable mood after the wedding when everyone would be congratulating everyone else and eating and drinking—a fancy-confections maker, and Nell, and Penelope, and Sarah, and Selma, and Pauline, and anyone else who happened to be present.