SHE WAS so distracted she would have preferred to forgo dinner altogether that night, but Aunt Tizzy had arrived for her Christmas visit, bringing with her a whiff of the outer world, and Lilian liked to hear what she had to say. If it weren’t for Aunt Tizzy, she would never know there were interesting aspects to the Eliot family, such as their mother’s having always gone barefoot in spring or Mr. Eliot being kept overnight in jail for being an unruly youth, that is, for drinking. When Lilian asked her father what life had been like before she was born, he told her matter-of-factly that it was quite the same as it was now.

With her head full of Walter Vail and encouraged by Aunt Tizzy’s presence, by her sparkling bracelets and thin crimson lips, by her hair afrizz around her pale face, Lilian asked her father how he and Mrs. Eliot had met. She’d heard the story before, but it hadn’t been for some time — it had to do with a meeting involving a picnic and some lost gloves. Lilian was interested in meetings.

Mr. Eliot, who had married relatively late in life, regarded his daughter as if she were an interrogator trying to get him to speak. He wasn’t going to be tricked. You ask your mother about that, he said.

Mrs. Eliot sat at the far end of the table, blinking with contentment, her nose in a wineglass.

What about your mother and father? Lilian asked. Mr. Eliot’s parents had died within a month of each other during a flu epidemic in 1882. Mr. Eliot had been twenty. Aunt Tizzy, being ten years younger — their brother Uncle Nat was in the middle — had gone to live with cousins in Dover.

They knew each other in Boston, Mr. Eliot said, indicating this was the entire story. Above the highboy was an oval painting in a gold frame of a small boy in ringlets and a ruffled dress. My Father When He Was a Little Girl, Mr. Eliot called it.

They met in a war relief office, said Aunt Tizzy. That’s how Uncle Charlie told it. Mother was doing nursing work and Father had been wounded …

Father was never enlisted, said Mr. Eliot.

He most certainly was, said Aunt Tizzy. I have his cap.

Just because a man has a cap doesn’t mean he was a Union soldier.

Not this again, said Arthur.

Mr. Eliot regarded his son with collapsed lids. You watch your impertinence, he said.

With interest, said Arthur.

Someday that attitude will get you in trouble.

Let’s hope, said Arthur.