“I’m so glad you’re here, Aunt Olivia!” It was heartfelt, the one certainty in what had been said so far.

Olivia laughed and came round to lay an arm around Cathy’s shoulders and give her a good warm squeeze. “I’m dying to see him,” she said. “I just hope he won’t be overpowered by Father and Eben.”

“He won’t,” Cathy said, “even though I think they look on him as a specimen of something or other—the younger generation, I suppose.”

“Yes, well, no doubt he looks on them as specimens?”

“Oh, yes, he does,” Cathy said, smiling mischievously. “He’s never seen anyone quite like Gram and Eben. He can’t get over how they talk about real things, as Joel calls them.”

“His own family doesn’t?”

“His stepfather is an absolute straight, you see. He and Joel never did get on, and now, of course, this Dartmouth business has made it all worse. And his mother—” Cathy hesitated, twirling a glass in her hands, then setting it down—“I guess she’s one of those women who complain all the time, and is terribly anxious about Joel, so she always needles him. They sound awful.”

“Lucky thing for him that he landed at Ellen’s, I must say.”

“He just adores Nick.”

“Good heavens, Mother told me to be sure to look at the potatoes—and the roast.” Olivia fled to the kitchen, followed by Cathy. “Just run out and see if Father wants to be wheeled in, will you, darling?”

Cornelius insisted on wheeling himself in, but then the fire needed a new log, and Cathy went out to get a few more from the shed. The time for any intimate talk was past.

Eben walked in without knocking just as Christina was coming downstairs, in a long, soft, blue dress she had unearthed from a cupboard. He stood looking up at her, quizzically, and murmured, “‘She walks in beauty like the night.’”

“Don’t be absurd. It’s an old thing—years old.”

“Not the dress, Christina—you.”

Just then Olivia came out of the kitchen. “Oh, hi, Eben!”

“You and I,” Eben said, slipping an arm through hers, “know beauty when we see it! What young girl can hold a candle to that?”

“She does look rather grand, doesn’t she?”

Christina, still only halfway down the stairs, laughed her boyish laugh and felt awkward.

“I’m emancipated. Olivia has commandeered the kitchen. Come in, Eben, take off your coat, and come in to the fire. Cornelius will be wildly impatient!”

Eben insisted that he could at least be allowed to get the drinks, and for a few moments Christina and Cornelius were alone. He made no exclamation, but took her hand and kissed it as she sat on the arm of his chair, flushed and sparkling. They were caught like two lovers when Cathy staggered in with two huge logs.

“Goodness, child, you’ll strain your back!”