His answer was to lay down his cup and hand over a bunch he had selected out.

“What extraordinary clothes they wore!” she said, taking out a photograph of Cornelius’s father and mother beside the Pierce Arrow. Mrs. Chapman had on an immense hat and a shirtwaist with a big bow under her chin. “And what a tiny waist your mother had!”

She had picked up another photograph, of a team of eight horses pulling what looked like a huge garden roller across a snowy road.

“That was the snow roller. Kept the snow down hard for pungs and sleighs.” But he was impatient now. “Look at my father on Baldy.”

There was Judge Chapman in his splendid riding clothes, on the gray he was riding when Christina first came to visit.

“Yes, I remember Baldy,” she said.

There was a wonderful procession of long-skirted ladies with straw hats tied under their chins against the wind, and boys and men carrying picnic baskets, crossing a field. And Cornelius as a boy playing a foursome of tennis with girls in skirts to the ground.

“Good heavens!” Christina said. “How did we ever manage?”

“Put them away,” Cornelius said. “They make me sad.”

“Why, darling?”

“Strange, I suppose, how houses outlive people.”

“Oh, yes, if only we could see them dancing, hear the laughter—be there again!”

“I miss my parents.” He sounded cross. Christina recognized the family trait. She had thought Judge Chapman was angry when their engagement was announced. But he was actually moved and on the point of tears, so he had blurted out, “Damn weddings!” and turned on his heel.

Christina took the tray into the kitchen and stood there for a moment looking out the window. It was snowing hard—thick, soft curtains coming down relentlessly, silently. Already the ground was white. It was catching along the pine boughs. She couldn’t see to the road. Slowly, inexorably, they were being enclosed, carried off into winter. She would be alone with Cornelius, darling old man who mourned his parents—alone with him in a new way.

Around noon Ed Taggart, the road agent, turned up, insisted on bringing in more wood for Christina when he saw the woodbox was low, then sat and talked with Cornelius while she was out in the kitchen getting lunch. Now and then she caught a word. They were making plans about plowing. The snow drifted heavily on their hill, and she caught the suggestion “snow fences.” When she came back into the study in her apron, she was amused to find the two men playing cribbage.