“I’ve been distressing your wife, Mr. Webster, with my cynicism—and she is quite right. I’m critical because I love the old town. When I first came back with Olive, when she knew she had cancer, I decided we would go through that here, together. When a man brings his wife home to die, you know that’s really home and no other place in the world would do. I suppose what eats into me is to see so much potential going to waste. Poor education even now—not enough to nourish. I see the young men get caught with some girl and settle for a laborer’s job, hunt, fish, do a little inept carpentering, and buy themselves a trailer. The challenge has gone out of life here for the young.”

“It’s just so much better than a city slum,” Sally said.

“And there are human relationships that have some depth between people of different sorts. Christina and Ellen Comstock have been friends for fifty years or more by now. And maybe that brings us back to the summer people. There’s no doubt that they got a hell of a lot in exchange for their money. That I am ready to grant.”

There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, partly the dark creeping in, partly a change in the old man’s mood, and Tim exchanged a look with his wife, which she caught as meaning it might be time to go. Still, they couldn’t get up and leave with a half-finished drink in their hands.

“I haven’t really helped you, have I? It takes a while to warm up to the subject—for me, I mean—these days. And then I suppose I stand somewhere in between. I’m with the summer people when they fight against hardtop-ping these lovely back roads—they want to be able to ride. The natives want to be able to get plowed out in winter. But I’m with the natives when a group of rich men get together and buy up the best beach on the lake for their own purposes—because I used to swim there when I was a boy. The joke is that, on the whole, the summer people want the past and the natives want to put up trailers, shops, God knows what, because it will bring money in. They want speedboats. It’s Jem that cares about the past. The natives probably won’t even show up for his celebrations. They want motor-cycle scrambles, rock-and-roll instead of folk dances—you know …”

“I begin, I think, to get an idea about what our point of view might be—a sort of balance sheet of profits and losses on both sides,” Tim Webster said, stroking his chin.

“Yes, and then that balance sheet has to be brought alive through individual stories. That’s where your wife comes in. Am I right?”

Tim laughed. “I’m no writer, except of briefs—true.”