Cathy and Christy made a rush for the porch and raced away.

“Well,” Alan said, “peace at last.”

Alan was a physicist, studying at M.I.T.—he and Dorothy, the two quiet ones.

And then Bruno and Sybille came down together, and greetings and laughter picked up again. Olivia came out of the kitchen to pour herself a glass of sherry.

“Good to see you, Bruno—unofficially.” They were on a committee together for urban renewal.

They all lived near or in Boston, yet hardly ever met. There was so little time. All of them had obligations and work, so an occasion like this was in every sense a reunion. At last they settled down and there was a silence.

John looked around at all the faces, amazed, as he always was, by the family resemblances—Alan’s wide forehead so like his grandfather’s, Marianne’s eyes so like her mother’s—and also by the fact that they were such extreme individualists. A stranger walking in might not fit them together at all as a breed or clan, might think they were strangers, met here by accident in a family hotel. He caught Olivia’s eye.

“A penny for your thoughts, John.”

“We’re quite a family—that’s what I was thinking.”

But whatever he really had in mind was never said, for Cornelius had got Bruno over to discuss the market. And the two men were leaning close together, nodding, exchanging their mysterious language that interested no one else in the room.

“What I want to know,” Dorothy said across the room to her uncle, “is what’s going on in Willard. You’ve been here a whole day, Uncle John. Tell us the news.”

John moved across to their end of the room as Christina and Olivia disappeared again into the kitchen. He told them about the history, and about Nick and the owl. And these morsels were devoured and commented on with the greatest eagerness. Marianne announced that she must go down and see Ellen, if only for a moment, after dinner. Alan was especially interested in Old Pete. “Has he got any coons this year?” Dorothy questioned her uncle closely about the history.

“Mother is writing a chapter about the women.”

Sybille picked this up. “It certainly has been dominated by women around here.”

“Yes, that’s what’s so interesting,” said Alan. “A matriarchal society all right. And what does that do to the values?”

Cathy dashed across the room and upstairs to fetch her guitar, and was followed shortly by Robin, Comfort, and Christy, who had run to find her.

“There’s a windowpane out in the barn, Grandpa,” Robin shouted excitedly. “I can put a new one in if there’s any putty around.”

Cornelius lifted his head. “What? What’s that?”

But the pane had been left open on purpose. It had been Cathy’s wish because she hoped an owl might nest in the barn.