Irene Putnam kept smoking throughout the meal, sucking at the cigarette, tapping it even after the ash dropped.

Fishing and killing birds were not the lofty subjects Sis Sedgwick had hoped for during her luncheon. Still, she remained silent, with an engrossed expression, contributing nothing. Fortunately, Irene Putnam brought up the subject of a book she’d been reading. Sis had never understood how someone with so scatterbrained a way of talking could be as smart as everyone said, but now wasn’t the time to puzzle over it.

It’s wonderful, said Irene Putnam, and awfully entertaining. But one does wonder at the plausibility of it — you know, compared to life.

Marian Wiggin, who felt the words wonderful and entertaining described life perfectly, shook her charm bracelet and thrust forward her pugdog face.

We’ve taken the most marvelous house for the summer, she said.

But, Irene went on, I’m not saying our life is bad. I just don’t see all the coincidences that are in books, and the adventure, and how people say exactly what they should. I don’t see it around.

But that’s what one likes to read, Dolly said. I loved the last serial in the Saturday Evening Post. Did anyone see it?

Irene frowned. She should have known better than to attempt this. I just wonder why no one writes about it the way it is — you know, with nothing happening.

It could be rather dull, Lilian said.

I suppose, Irene said. Though one does have feelings in a dull life, which aren’t dull, and aren’t they worth writing about?

That’s where Mr. Shelley comes in, said Jane. And Mr. Keats. They do the feelings.

Sis Sedgwick nodded. The poets were another thing she had never understood. She must have missed them in school, or if she hadn’t, she was no less baffled for it. But she was cheered by the turn in the conversation — she would be able to tell Cap they’d discussed poets and writing.

Well anyway, said Irene, and color spread at her very white neck, it was just something I wondered about.

After lunch they took their coffee in the living room. The ladies discussed dresses. No, thank you, Lilian said to Sis passing around the peppermints from S. S. Pierce. Lilian wondered if Marie Curie would have cared about women’s coats getting shorter, or if Joan of Arc could have sat for one minute on a flowered sofa in Brookline.

The conversation moved to hats. From there, in natural progression, to shoes, then to Elsie Sears’s marriage to the shoe heir and her conversion to Catholicism. This was discussed under the guise of religion.