But Olivia looks tired, Christina thought. She’s going on nerve. Olivia was tall and thin, elegant in her always-plain, beautifully-cut suits, her hair worn short these days, almost like a boy’s, or rather—Christina corrected herself—shorter than most boys’. Her face looked a little gaunt under the reddish curls, her gray eyes deep-set—that was where the fatigue showed.

“French champagne! Good heavens!”

“We couldn’t offer Mamzelle American champagne, lovey. She would turn up her nose!”

“She’s more like a mole than ever. Oh, dear!”

And while they laughed and talked Christina punctuated the conversation with cries of “Wherever is the gravy boat?” “Champagne glasses—they’ll have to be washed. On the highest shelf—yes, you’ll need the step-ladder.”

John came in to get sherry and glasses, and he and Olivia stood for a moment in the pantry while Christina went out to be sure Cornelius was all right.

“The beard’s great,” Olivia said. “You really are a distinguished critter.”

“It’s a wonderful mask. I feel I can’t be seen. I look out but I’m invisible, you know.”

“I can see that it might be a kind of protection. I wish I could grow one.”

“You don’t need armor, do you?”

Olivia and John had always been able to connect at once. More than once it had been Olivia who was instrumental in bringing him back from the worst depressions.

“Who doesn’t?” she parried.

“You look dead tired, girl.”

“I am.” She leaned against the counter, facing him but looking down. “The hard thing in this job is to keep a balance between caring and showing that you do, and yet being impersonal enough. Somehow I find it harder than I used to. It seems as if more children were cruelly treated than ever before. I see too much suffering. Some of the judges think keeping a family together is everything, and will send children home when we know it is dangerous. Last week a ten-year-old boy was brought in with a broken arm—broken by his father. At last we have been able to place him with foster parents.”

“I don’t know how you keep at it, year after year, and don’t get emptied out.”

“I do.” Then she visibly shook off her self-pity. “But it’s never boring. People do what they want, John, however much they may complain.”

“Maybe …” John considered this. “No, I can’t say that I have. Most of my life I’ve done what I ought to do. Jane wants me to write a chapter on the natural history of Willard for the bicentennial.”

“Marvelous! That’s something you want to do surely?”

“Yes and no. I dread the effort. I dread getting back into those old dreams of being a naturalist—but I guess it will be fun after all. And I want to do it for Jane, of course.”

Olivia sighed. “Middle age is awful.”