There was a pause that lengthened and shivered over the kitchen table.

At last, Aunt Amy rose from her chair. “I think,” she said slowly, “that this visit is at an end. Please tell your mother that I shall be writing her from Boston. Good evening.”

“Wow,” said Lulu after she had left. She was looking at her sister with a newfound respect and even admiration. “All right, Soph. Really good one.”

“I should have been the one to say that,” said Emma. “Not you, and I apologize for not speaking up earlier, Charlie. But if I had said it, I couldn’t have said it half as well as that. Congratulations, Sophie, that was amazing.”

“Well, she was being rude to Charlie,” said Sophie. She shook her head firmly. “Not acceptable. Are you all right, Charles?”

“I’m fine,” said Charlie. “Thank you, Sophie, for standing up for me.”

Sophie snorted. “Very least any of us could do,” she said.

For a moment, the sisters looked at each other, their eyes shining. Then, as one, they sank back into their chairs.

“What are we going to tell Mom?” said Emma.

“If that’s really what she said, then you did the right thing, Sophie,” said Fee when the story had been told. “Although I’d very much rather it hadn’t included the part about the stuck-up Bostonian pipe. But I warn you, she’ll be quite angry with you. Aunt Amy isn’t used to people standing up to her, and she doesn’t like it when they do.”

“Then she can learn not to talk to people like that,” said Sophie. “Not to any sort of people. And this is Charlie.”

Fee sighed. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “She shouldn’t speak to people like that. But I’m going to take some time out here, because I think I need to have a bit of a talk to you girls about Aunt Amy. I’m very fond of your aunt Amy, as you know. I know she isn’t a saint, and I know she isn’t always the easiest person in the world for you to deal with, but—because, just as Sophie feels loyalty to Charlie, I feel a certain loyalty to her—I’d kind of like to explain to you that in many ways she hasn’t had life all that easy.”

“Not easy!” said Lulu. “She doesn’t have to work, she travels the world, and every time she opens her mouth, someone runs scurrying. What’s not easy for her?”

“Getting the point of Hamlet, for one thing,” said Sophie. “And behaving like any sort of recognizable human being, for another.”

Fee sighed again.

“I don’t think you girls realize,” she said, “exactly how different the world was for women just fifty years ago.”

“Oh, God.” Lulu slumped across the table. “Here we go. Oppression of the patriarchal society. Fishes and bicycles. More than a rose in a man’s lapel.”

“I know, I know,” said Fee. “I know you think I talk endlessly about the collective, and the fact is, I probably do, because it was a very important time in my life. But I’m not talking about me now, I’m talking about Aunt Amy, who is fifteen years older than me, and grew up in a much more conventional family than our branch of it ever was. Which means that whatever struggles I had in finding my place in the world, she had far, far worse. You girls have no idea—absolutely none—of the expectations that were placed on girls at the time and place where she was growing up. They were supposed to sit in a corner, look demure, keep their voices quiet and their hands folded in their lap, and not express a single opinion about anything but which brand of washing powder they preferred—and washing powder, by the way, was something they were expected to take very seriously indeed. It was an impossible time for any woman who had an ounce of spark or intelligence. None of you would have lasted five minutes, quite frankly.”