Lilian listened to Dolly, hoping to glean something instructive from her ramblings. She heard that a girl should always be interested in what a boy thought, that it was important to have the right sort of wrap, and that boys liked it if you hit them playfully on the arm. Dolly Cushing detailed her success with Freddie Vernon on these points. Dolly knew how to have fun, and if Lilian caught a little of her spirit she too might not take things so seriously. After leaving Dolly Cushing’s house she walked home along a darkening Dartmouth Street and tried to digest this information. It seemed as if there were a web of interference circulating through her head, preventing her from having a clear thought.

3 • The visitor from New York

3 • The visitor from New York

HE WAS a guest of the Fenwicks’, staying with them through the holidays, and Madelaine Fenwick had been taking him around. Lilian first shook his hand at the Nobles’ lunch the previous week and learned he was from New York.

He was there again at the Fenwicks’ tea party a few days later, holding his back stiffly, still wearing the uniform. He had a straight nose, a finely defined mouth and a distracted air. Lilian placed him as one of those visitors who find life in Boston dull. As a Bostonian, Lilian could criticize Boston all she liked, but to an outsider she had the urge to defend it. He was not the sort of boy to be interested in Lilian Eliot, not that she would be drawn to him at all. Just the fact of his proximity to cold Madelaine Fenwick and his hovering over her by the tea tray was enough to put Lilian off. But he was in the armed forces, and it was hard not to be curious about someone ready to go off and fight.

When he said hello to Lilian he remembered her name, which threw her into confusion. She went to the opposite side of the room.

Some time later he reappeared. Running away from me? he said. He sat down on the needlepoint hassock almost at her feet.

I don’t even know you.

We met last week, he said. Walter Vail.

Oh, yes.

You’re not one of those Boston snobs, are you? Sniffy about people from New York?

She was taken aback. I don’t know many people from New York, she said. Her Aunt Tizzy lived there, though she was from Boston, and there were Marian Lockwood’s cousins from New York who used to visit at Easter, all smart clothes and ringlets, with a fondness for pickles.

I don’t know many people from Boston, Walter Vail said.

Haven’t you been meeting any this week?

I’ve been trying. He looked at her sideways.