Not that he wanted to. With all his heart, he was opposed to the enterprise, first, on moral grounds—Nat’s plan involved a certain amount of deception—and second, on practical grounds: they knew that Aunt Judith had been bitterly opposed to their mother’s marriage; it followed that she would not open her heart, or her purse, to the offspring of that marriage. The only sensible thing would be to wire their father for the money; surely he had not meant his injunction to apply to emergencies; surely he would want his precious damn yacht fixed up as quickly as possible. But Nat objected, without giving a reason. He didn’t need to; Eliot knew what it was. Drew had taken Nat’s side, not because he was proud but because he wanted to find out if they had a long-lost uncle and why Mother had never told them about him.

“I’m just taking a second to think things through before we go up there,” Nat said now. “Remember, let me do the talking.”

“Aye, aye, skipper.”

They went up Port Republic, looking at the house numbers, and came to a scrolled iron fence behind which stood a white, two-story house with black shutters and verandas aloft and alow. Nathaniel opened the gate and led the way down a brick walk and up the stairs to a windowless front door. A mocha-skinned Negro woman, quite tall, with streaks of gray in her hair, answered his ring. She said something in the same peculiar dialect he had heard from the Negroes stacking bales. He didn’t understand a word and asked if Mrs. Wilcox was in.

The woman uttered a phrase that sounded like “Shebeby-year,” which he took to be an affirmative answer.

“Please give this to her.” He took from his jacket pocket the note of introduction he had composed on the back of telephone company stationery.

They waited for a minute, for three, for five.…

“We know she has a telephone,” muttered Eliot, mopping his face with a bandanna. “We should have called first.”

“Better in person,” Nathaniel said. “Makes it harder for her to tell us to get lost.”

Another minute. Drew, squirming as though he had to go to the bathroom, wondered aloud if Judith Wilcox was not their relation after all.