Ed didn’t rise, just smiled at her and went on playing. Christina had always liked him, a rather stout man in his late fifties with very clear blue eyes, father of a family of six, who had himself been one of eleven children. No road agent is popular with everyone. He is inevitably the target of jealousies and complaints, but as road agents go, Ed Taggart was more acceptable than most of the half dozen or so the village had elected in the past twenty years. At least Ed took care of the plows and graders and trucks.

“You look very calm and cozy for a man who may be out all night plowing,” Christina said.

“First snow—it won’t last,” he said, and “Yes, thanks,” to her offered glass of sherry. He concentrated on the game.

While it continued, Christina picked up the pack of photographs and went through them again. It was a happy, peaceful feeling altogether. The change she had felt in the air for the past week was now here at the hearth where Ed Taggart would never have sat down before. Was Cornelius aware of how momentous an occasion it really was? Clearly he was enjoying himself, and when Ed rose to leave they agreed to play some more on another day.

After lunch, snow still falling fast, they talked about Ed, and then about Cornelius’s mother, who had died a few years after their marriage.

“I wish I had known her better,” she said, the photograph of that slim elegance in her hand. “But she always made me feel uncouth—too large or something.”

“It was shyness. She was really awfully shy—my mother.” He reached for the photograph and held it in his hand. “I guess she was always a kind of prisoner, first of her own formidable family, then of my father and his world. When we first came here for the summer, the grandparents ruled the roost, you know.”

“We may mind the world of our grandchildren, but it’s so much more open than theirs, or even ours, isn’t it? Imagine the road agent playing cribbage with your father!”

Cornelius chuckled. “We’ve graduated, haven’t we?”

And Christina knew what he meant. They had moved into a different category—winter people at last.

“Not having servants makes a big difference. Your mother was always behind a barrier of servants. That’s partly why I want to try this alone, just we two.”

“And what’s the other part?”

“Oh, you know, darling—to have you all to myself.”