“At your age, my dear, whenever Cupid shot his arrows into my soft heart, I could hardly stomach a morsel.”

Mr. Cutting snorted.

Undeterred, Mrs. Hunnowell turned her full attention to me.

“My child, when I was in love, I never ate at all. I lived”—and here she paused, exhaling the next words carefully—“I lived on air and love. A thought of butter would never have entered those spirit regions.”

“Ah. Love,” drawled Bart Hunnowell, the words dragging him up from the sofa. I felt his eyes on my back, and my face answered with a hot surge of color. For some reason that morning, I wished to provoke him into the more interesting silence of his—this lounging parlor man I thought beneath him.

“I don’t know,” I commented aloud, “I’d rather wish my life to be full of incident and feeling, with a love that gives purpose to life—not air, Mrs. Hunnowell—and sets a flame to burn with the pure clarity that heats a day.”

“Why that is beautiful, Maisie.” Mrs. Hunnowell clutched a hand to her bosom.

“How aptly your daughter describes the hearth lamps burning in the home,” Mr. Cutting said approvingly to Mama.

“And what might that purpose be, Miss Thomas?” Bart asked quietly.

I turned round to face him. “I beg your pardon?”

“This purpose love would give your life—this flame, as you call it—what would it be? Musn’t you burn toward something? Musn’t there be a goal in mind?”

“Must there be?” I stabbed back, uncomfortably aware that we were the only two who spoke.

“If you do not wish to be consumed—if you wish your life to have its own inviolable core that burns but does not perish in the burning—then, yes, I think it vital to seek a purpose.”

He had turned on me, upending the very image I thought he would most approve. Caught out, I cast back hotly, “I do not notice you, Mr. Hunnowell, to be heavily encumbered by the pursuit of a purpose.”

The color drained from his cheek. The shot had met its mark. He stood up abruptly. “Then you have noticed far less than I thought, Miss Thomas.” And with that, he passed from the room.

“Oh, my dear!” said Mrs. Hunnowell, staring after her son.

Mama said nothing. But I gazed at the doorway miserably. I had not meant to hurt him. The dull thrum of the kitchen bell vibrated below our feet, causing me to start.