The irrepressible desire for show suited the clear bright blue days that summer sported. For the days having reached their fullest bloom, the open throat of the season was now held bare to the glorious mornings and cooler evenings. The hours beckoned through the lovely trees. Never do I remember so many uninterrupted days of sun: The sky seemed to have emptied itself of fog and rain, to hang like a perfect porcelain bowl above us. Rows into the harbor at twilight were planned, and picnic lunches staged on nearly every large outcropping of rock. Day after day passed by in this way, slightly mad with fun, while the nights shivered with lights sent out across the still black water, carrying chatter and laughter like a velvet-backed butler filling glasses in a crowd.

Even Mama yielded, each day drawing closer to the bonhomie, until one morning I saw her smile again in the old way, her lovely head held high while she positively bantered with Mr. Cutting.

Indeed, it seemed a curious camaraderie had sprung up between Mama and Mr. Cutting. In years past, Mama had drooped beneath the deluge of his words, none of them particularly inspiring, meant rather to crush the air from any original thought struggling up into the room. But this summer, I noticed Mama smile at his effulgence; indeed, I thought there were times when his conversation actively interested her.

And so it was that the man had lately become a consistent third: offering his opinions, holding Mama’s sewing bag while she stepped down the piazza stairs, and generally clouding my horizon.

He was kindly, but he had very little imagination for anything other than all the catastrophe and disorder of the past, prefacing most comments with a confounded shake of the head.

“What is it Mr. Cutting?” Mama turned to him upon the verandah after luncheon.

“Imagine, Mrs. Thomas,” he began, gazing down the fine length of lawn toward the dinghies setting out for an afternoon sail. “How little the young understand their fun; why, only fifty years ago, those same dinghies would have been the cold refuges of families struggling to fish for their livelihoods.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Cutting, I do believe there are still fishermen upon the seas,” I interposed.

“Yes, Miss Thomas, but the general quality oflife has so improved. There is duck cloth; there are galoshes. There is light, for Lord’s sake, when the men return home. Just imagine the cold and the dark.” And he shook his head in amazement. I merely regarded him. History appeared to him as a series of marvelously dispatched incidents of progress overcoming nature, delivering us at last into this perfect present. I conceived of his mind as a museum gallery, where imagination hung gilded and framed upon the walls. He scoffed at novels; he scoffed, indeed, at writing anything down.

“Although,” he conceded, “newspapers do hold their value; there is always something to be got from them at least—something real.”