“The raspberry jam,” said her mother, fixing the damage.

“She always does,” said Marcia critically, “even without jam.”

Papa watched their mother fussing over all of them, and he frowned.

“You all look all right; what’s all this fuss about?” he snapped. “Godamighty, you don’t think Isobel has any more than you do, do you? Where’s your watch? Why don’t you pin it up a little higher? Nothing to be ashamed of. Thirty-dollar watch, by God. Pin her up higher where somebody can see it.”

Papa was always reminding their mother of her watch, which he and Aunt Lois and their grandmother had bought last Christmas, though in showing it off to strangers he never mentioned his cosponsors. He had indeed forgotten about them so completely that on Aunt Lois’s last visit he had boasted right to her face about the fine present he had given Daisy. Aunt Lois, pink and blond, and wonderfully perfumed, had smiled.

“Yes, it is a lovely watch, Harry,” she softly agreed. “But mother and I are still waiting for your share of it to be paid.”

For some reason this made their mother cry and their father swear, and the watch was seldom worn after that except when father insisted. Mother obediently pinned it up higher on her waist now, and the girls studied it with earnest admiration again, knowing that to grow up meant this dainty prize, a blue enameled fleur-de-lis pin holding a blue enameled locket of a watch to beat right over your own heart.

“I guess you look a damn sight better than Isobel ever did in her life,” said father proudly, patting their mother.

“Well, my stars alive!” was what Isobel said when the party walked in the front gate of this relation’s home. “If it isn’t Harry and Daisy and the girls! Chris! Come on out and see who’s here!”

Isobel was just going to pay a call on the minister’s wife. She looked so pretty that Marcia secretly wished she was their mother. For instance, Isobel’s skin and eyes and hair seemed all of one dusty gold color like a toasted angel’s. Then she had pale tan shoes with pretty curved Cuban heels, and she had a rolled-up brown umbrella with a wolf’s head handle made of ivory with little emerald eyes; her small feather toque dropped a beautiful veil over her face, so that forever after Marcia thought beauty consisted of long pale lashes on a creamy oval face delicately marked into tiny octagonal shadows by a brown veil. Even more marvellous was the fact that Isobel could talk—very fast, too—through this veil and kiss through it, too. While the parents talked with Isobel and Chris, Marcia invented a game, much to Lena’s delight and admiration, called “Isobel.” This was merely kissing each other through their handkerchiefs and then, on a better inspiration, through the screen door.