I whirled round to catch Bart Hunnowell holding aloft my bowl of fruit and making a great show of eating the berries one at a time, throwing a raspberry up into the air and then tossing his head back to catch the falling fruit directly into his open mouth. I moved to grab my bowl from him, but he nimbly sidestepped my reach and started away across the lawn in front of the House to the bordering fields, the bowl held high above his head. The girls started running back down the lawn to catch him, and the other little ones, seeing a game, ran after. Suddenly, he stopped, turned around, and waved at me, as if to challenge me to come after my own harvest. In spite of myself, I smiled—against the dulling yellows of the field grasses, his masculine form breathed color and life, and his brown arms, raised higher than the reaching hands of the jumping children, made of his body a taut and sturdy line, a mast amidst the swell of childish bodies hurling themselves against him. In that moment, and seen safely at a distance, Bart Hunnowell appeared to me to be burning with the pure flame—more, to be the single flame itself—filled with a vital warmth, of life. Of living. I smiled.

Jonathan Lanman stepped out upon the piazza just at that moment and stopped, one foot upon the top stair, arrested by the happy chaos in the fields, his hands in his pockets and his mouth pursed in what might have been a silent whistle. He stood looking at the group in the fields for a good long while, his head cocked a bit to one side, as though he were in a picture gallery, changing his stance every so often for a better viewing. His clothing abetted this appearance, for though the day was warm, still he wore his jacket and tie. But there was a passion in the manner of his gaze that belied the calm appearance of a merely appraising gallerygoer—he stared at the children as though he saw through them into a grander arrangement, as though they represented something larger than themselves. Could he see it, too? Life, sheer abundant summer life, careening joyous and wild before us in the field.

The sight, with its infectious joy, made me bold, and suddenly I wished to speak aloud of it to this man, for Papa clearly held him in high regard, and the past weeks had left me not insensible to the good sort he was. Often I had observed him handing his mother into her chair, or sailing with his brother, and I had noted how easily he managed the turn from family man to businessman as he discussed office topics with my father. In my presence, however, he remained quite silent, forever polite, a bit grave, and thus somewhat tantalizing.