“Oh, how can I thank you!” Mrs. Sauer said. “Now if someone would be kind enough to get my glasses, I could admire your needlework. They’re on the mantelpiece.”
Victor found her glasses?not on the mantelpiece but on a nearby table. He gave them to her and then walked up and down the porch a few times. He managed to suggest that he was no longer a chance guest but had become a member of the family. He sat down on the steps, and Theresa joined him there. “Look at them,” the old lady said to her husband. “Doesn’t it do you good to see, for a change, young people who love one another?… There goes the sunset gun. My brother George bought that gun for the yacht club. It was his pride and his joy. Isn’t it quiet this evening?”
But the tender looks and attitudes that Mrs. Sauer took for pure love were only the attitudes of homeless summer children who had found a respite. Oh, how sweet, how precious the hour seemed to them! Lights burned on another island. Stamped on the twilight was the iron lace of a broken greenhouse roof. What poor magpies. Their ways and airs were innocent; their bones were infirm. Indeed, they impersonated the dead. Come away, come away, sang the wind in the trees and the grass, but it did not sing to the Mackenzies. They turned their heads instead to hear old Mrs. Sauer. “I’m going up to put on my green velvet,” she said, “but if you children don’t feel like dressing…”
Waiting on table that night Agnes thought that she had not seen such a gay dinner in a long time. She heard them go off after dinner to play billiards on the table that had been bought for poor, dead Talbot. A little rain fell, but, unlike the rain at Horsetail Beach, this was a gentle and excursive mountain shower. Mrs. Sauer yawned at eleven, and the game broke up. They said good night in the upstairs hall, by the pictures of Talbot’s crew, Talbot’s pony, and Talbot’s class. “Good night, good night,” Mrs. Sauer exclaimed, and then set her face, determined to overstep her manners, and declared, “I am delighted that you agreed to stay. I can’t tell you how much it means. I’m?” Tears started from her eyes.
“It’s lovely to be here,” Theresa said.
“Good night, children,” Mrs. Sauer said.
“Good night, good night,” Mr. Sauer said.
“Good night,” Victor said.
“Good night, good night,” Theresa said.
“Sleep well,” Mrs. Sauer said. “And pleasant dreams.”
Ten days later, the Sauers were expecting some other guests?some young cousins named Wycherly. They had never been to the house before, and they came up the path late in the afternoon. Victor opened the door to them. “I’m Victor Mackenzie,” he said cheerfully. He wore tennis shorts and a pullover, but when he bent down to pick up a suitcase, his knees creaked loudly: “The Sauers are out driving with my wife,” he explained. “They’ll be back by six, when the drinking begins.” The cousins followed him across the big living room and up the stairs. “Mrs. Sauer is giving you Uncle George’s room,” he said, “because it has the best view and the most hot water. It’s the only room that’s been added to the house since Mr. Sauer’s father built the place in 1903…”
The young cousins did not quite know what to make of him. Was he a cousin himself? an uncle, perhaps? a poor relation? But it was a comfortable house and a brilliant day, and in the end they would take Victor for what he appeared to be, and he appeared to be very happy. THE SORROWS OF GIN
It was Sunday afternoon, and from her bedroom Amy could hear the Beardens coming in, followed a little while later by the Farquarsons and the Parminters. She went on reading Black Beauty until she felt in her bones that they might be eating something good. Then she closed her book and went down the stairs. The living- room door was shut, but through it she could hear the noise of loud talk and laughter. They must have been gossiping or worse, because they all stopped talking when she entered the room.
“Hi, Amy,” Mr. Farquarson said.
“Mr. Farquarson spoke to you, Amy,” her father said.
“Hello, Mr. Farquarson,” she said. By standing outside the group for a minute, until they had resumed their conversation, and then by slipping past Mrs. Farquarson, she was able to swoop down on the nut dish and take a handful.
“Amy!” Mr. Lawton said.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said, retreating out of the circle, toward the piano.
“Put those nuts back,” he said.
“I’ve handled them, Daddy,” she said.
“Well, pass the nuts, dear,” her mother said sweetly. “Perhaps someone else would like nuts.”
