“That’s very good of you, Miss Pride,” I said. “I like to read.”

She asked me then if I knew stenography. “What a pity,” she said. “I thought they taught you that sort of thing in the public schools. I was about to say that I shall presently be looking for a secretary. The fact is, my dear, which I hope you won’t breathe, that I have been thinking of writing my memoirs. Now you’ll think me outrageously pretentious. I haven’t a scrap of talent, as I’m quite aware, but I feel it my duty to preserve certain things, certain recollections of my father, a most praiseworthy man. But there’s no time to tell you about Papa. Perhaps you wouldn’t care for that sort of work anyhow.”

“Oh, on the contrary,” I cried. “I should like nothing better. But of course I could not leave my mother.”

“No, I suppose not. One’s first duty, after all, is to one’s mother, or to one’s father, as in my case. Well, we shall see.”

The chiming of an unseen clock warned me that I must leave. Miss Pride led the way to the drawing-room to show me her Copley which she had mentioned earlier. As she opened the door, I saw, seated before the fire on a low bench, a girl with long red hair. She did not turn at the sound of the door but said, “Auntie?”

Miss Pride turned to me. “Some other day you shall see the Copley. Good-by.” And without shaking hands with me, she disappeared into the drawing-room, closing the door behind her.

The word “drawing-room” had fascinated me for many years. When I first learned that Miss Pride’s house was equipped with such a place, I furnished it with an erratic ensemble, elements of which I borrowed from every interior I had known or read about. It contained, among other things, a box of ferns like the one in the sixth-grade room at school. I had at first interpreted the meaning of the word as “a room where people draw pictures”; but this I rejected when I heard the expression “to draw out,” and I thought that a drawing-room would be the setting for skillful conversation. When at last I learned that the word had been truncated and was actually “withdrawing,” I envisaged a group of ladies cringing through a door as brutal men advanced, much in the manner of “The Rape of the Sabine Women,” a brown, stained print of which hung in the classroom of the Latin and French teacher.