“Excellent! I’m going to New York next week. I’ll just pick up some stamped things there.”

“My hoops are cracking.”

“I’ll buy you some new hoops! I’ll buy you some ivory ones inlaid with gold. I dare say they have such things?”

“Why, certainly they have,” said my mother. “Once I had a pair of solid gold ones with diamonds set in. That was just one of the things Hermann carried off with him.” She coughed a little and the doctor bent closer to her.

“What you really need,” he said with such terrible excitement that the stethoscope shook in his hand, “is mountain air. Don’t you know anyone in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks that could put you up for a few weeks?”

“Ah, doctor, that’s just what I’ve always said! The sea air is bad for me. But no, no, I don’t know nobody in the mountains. I’ll just die here like the child.”

“Yes, yes, well, that’s neither here nor there. I have made up my mind that you must have mountain air. I will see what I can do—come to think of it, I have a friend in the Adirondacks who might very well let me, that is, let you have the use of his cabin. Charming place, set in a grove of fir trees with a lake near by. The problem, of course, would be finding someone to take care of you.”

“Oh, Sonie’s a good mother’s helper. She’s a dreamy girl and goes off a little crazy now and then, but she’s a sweet nurse all the same.”

“I don’t doubt that,” said the doctor. Frustrated, unable for a moment to find his way to the fulfillment of his obvious scheme, he swore softly under his breath, apologized, and said he had just remembered an important engagement he had not kept that afternoon. Then he continued, “I don’t wish to interfere in the upbringing of your daughter, Mrs. Marburg, but it seems to me that this is a very important time of her life . . . that is, in school. That is to say, from my point of view, it would be actually dangerous to take her out of school now, just a few months before commencement. Why, she might not get her diploma! Where would she be then? No, I think you ought to let her finish the year out. I will find you a companion myself.”

My mother’s eyes shone at the prospect of the mountains. It was the first time, to my knowledge, that she had ever earnestly wished to leave Chichester. I have never known anyone in whom wanderlust was so completely lacking. Perhaps she was incapable of imagining a place in America other than this seaside village, but tonight she was granted second sight. As if she were already listening to the wind through the fir trees, she murmured, “I love the mountains. They don’t smell of clams.”