They sat on into absolute darkness, finishing the last teaspoonful of blueberry preserve, and the last crumby cooky.  Mrs. Davenport was interested in everything her sister had to say; knew the Carters, and even some of their closest friends, by name, and asked all sorts of questions about them.  Josephine, after a half-hearted offer to help with the dishes, departed for a rehearsal of “Robin Hood,” which was to be given by the women of the church as their annual entertainment.  While she was upstairs, little Nammy was sent up to bed, but when it was absolutely necessary to have lights, and the group at the table naturally adjourned, little Julia and Pip gallantly did their share of the work.

Harriet knew that work by heart; no amount of absence could ever make her unfamiliar with any detail of it.  The clearing of the table, the shaking of the crumpled tablecloth, the setting of the breakfast table, the hot glare of electric light in the cluttered and odorous kitchen, the scraping of congealed plates, the spreading of her damp tea towel on the rack by the sink, the selection of a dry towel.

Linda, she reflected, had had seventeen years—­had had something nearer twenty-five years of it.  For Linda had been only Josephine’s age when their mother died, and Professor Field’s daughters had assumed the management of his little home.  Linda might have been anything, thought her sister, as the older woman rinsed and soaped cheerfully, in the insufferable heat of the kitchen, but she had always had cooking and dishes to do.  She said that she liked them.

Julia was Harriet’s favourite among the children.  Pip had been a baby, entirely absorbing his mother, in those terrible days nine years ago, but Julia had been a delicious, confidential two-year-old, with a warm soft hand, and a flushed little friendly face under tumbling curls.  Harriet had bathed her, dressed her, fed her, and taken her for silent walks.  And on many a moonlit night the unconscious little body had been held tight in Harriet’s arms, and the unconscious little face wet with passionate tears.

Julia had never known this, but Harriet never forgot it, and she looked at Julia lovingly, as the small, sturdy girl in her shabby little school-frock went to and fro busily.

“And now we can talk!” Linda said at last, when the kitchen was dark and hot and orderly, and the children gone upstairs to bed in hot darkness, and she and Harriet had taken the seats on the small, hot porch.  “This is a terrible night—­nine o’clock—­and they are hardly settled off yet!”

Nine o’clock.  They would still be at dinner at Crownlands, and the river breeze would be blowing the thin curtains of Harriet’s French windows straight into the cool, fresh room.  She would be out on the porch, now, looking at the river lights, her book forgotten in her lap.  At the head of the table Richard Carter would be sitting, in his cool and immaculate white, and at the foot, sparkling and beautiful, with her fresh bare arms and her firm bare shoulders, her exquisitely modelled hair and her bright eyes, Isabelle.  And beside her, to-night, Royal Blondin, musical, poetical, playing the game with all his consummate art, scoring with every glance and word—­