“Oh, I can’t!  I can’t!” protested Eugenia distressfully.  “I detest ‘Daughter’ things, and I have a rooted aversion to my duty.  But if she comes to me I’ll join it—­I know I shall!  How did you keep out of it?”

“I didn’t.  I’m in it.  It seems that our duty is confined to ’preserving the antiquities’ of Kingsborough—­so I began by presenting a jar of pickled cucumbers to Uncle Ish.  I trust they won’t be the death of him, but he was the only antiquity in sight.”

She gave the smouldering log a push with her foot, and it broke apart, scattering a shower of sparks.  “I don’t know any other woman so much admired and so little loved,” she mused of Mrs. Webb.

“Papa worships her,” said Eugenia.  “All men do—­at a distance.  She’s the kind of woman you never get near enough to to feel that she is flesh.  Now, Aunt Chris is just the opposite.  No one ever gets far enough away from her to feel that she’s a saint—­which she is.”

“It’s odd she never married,” wondered Sally.

“She never had time to.”  Eugenia clasped her hands behind her head and looked up at the high, plastered ceiling.  “She never happened to be in a place where she could be spared.  But you know her lover died when she was young,” she added.  “It broke her heart, but it did not destroy her happiness.  She has been happy for forty years with a broken heart.”

“I know,” said Sally.  “It seems strange, doesn’t it?  But I’ve known so many like her.  The happiest woman I ever knew had lost everything she cared for in the war.  That war was fought on women’s hearts, but they went on beating just the same.  I’m glad I wasn’t I then.”

“And I’m sorry.  I like stirring deeds and shot and shell and tattered flags.  They thrill one.”

“And kill one,” added Sally.  “But you’ve got that kind of pluck.  You aren’t afraid.”

“Oh! yes, I am,” protested Eugenia.  “I’m afraid of bats and of getting fat like my forefathers.”

Sally shook a reassuring head.

“But you won’t, darling.  Your mother was thin, and you’re the image of her—­everybody says so.”

“But I’m afraid—­horribly afraid.  I don’t dare eat potatoes, and I wouldn’t so much as look at a glass of buttermilk.  The fear is on me.”

“It’s absurd.  Why, your grandma Tucker was a rail—­I remember her.  I know your other grandmother was—­enormous; but you ought to strike the happy medium—­and you do.  You’re splendid.  You aren’t a bit too large for your height.”

Eugenia laughed as she twisted Sally’s curls about her fingers.  “You’re the dearest little duck that ever lived on dry land,” she said.  “If I were a man I’d be wild about you.”

“A few of them are,” returned Sally meekly, casting up her eyes, “but I—­”

“How about Gerald Smith?”

“He’s too tall.  I look like an aspiring grasshopper beside him.”

“And Jack Wyth?”

“He’s too short.”