Dolly Cushing’s brother Hugh skated by, a ball bobbing atop his hat, and Beany Wheeler passed with an extra look from behind his glasses. In the distance she saw Sis Cabot pushing her little sister on a chair, her figure bent and cranelike. The black branches stood out against the sky and Walter Vail’s eyelashes stood out in his pale face, his breath trailing across in thin clouds. Lilian could not begin to fathom what was going on behind the mask face with the light birthmark running down it. Think of all the rooms he has seen, the views from high balconies, the dark doorways with candles shining inside … Lilian had only been to New York once, too young to remember more than an orange glow outside the windows at night and riding in a carriage with velvet. What she knew of it came from books or from Aunt Tizzy. Was it true that people traipsed about all night eating oysters and drinking champagne? Walter Vail’s eyebrows rose. She was sounding quite the swell.

But what did she do in Boston? he wanted to know. She lunched with aunts, had tea with ladies. She’d graduated from the Peabody School for Girls — Lilian kept her high honors to herself—and was continuing with a course or two of study, at the moment with Mr. Holmes’s lecture course on the History of Art. She went to concerts frequently, theatre rarely. One saw the same people in Boston. She viewed with some derision the Social Register. Boston was not like New York, filled with travelers. In Boston if a person went on a trip it would be to London, and he’d mention the crown jewels, the traffic noise in Piccadilly, and how foggy it had been. She recalled one Christmas on Beacon Street when Uncle Nat — that was her father’s brother — had turned his blank face to ask Aunt Tizzy what she wanted to travel for. Aunt Tizzy’s painted eyes rolled ceilingward. You were born in Boston, Uncle Nat persisted, why go anywhere else? To get away from people like you, Aunt Tizzy said, which made Lilian’s father laugh, but he was the only one.

Walter Vail listened to her, amused, as if he were adding up all the things which went into her and laying them out for contemplation.

Lilian was not apologizing for Boston, she said, tucking her chin into her collar, but she could see how someone could find it dull.

His look had some discomfort which she liked him for. He said he wasn’t finding it dull in the least.