She was really very lovely, but I felt that
the gray coat deadened her--that if she had not worn it she would not
have needed that touch of color in her cheeks.

She lighted a cigarette and stood looking off, with her hand on the
rail. "It is a heavenly morning, Ducky. And you are going to church?"

I smiled at her and said, "Yes."

Nancy did not go to church. She practiced an easy tolerance. Her people
had been, originally, Quakers. In later years they had turned to
Unitarianism. And now in this generation, Nancy, as well as Anthony
Peak, had thrown off the shackles of religious observance.

"But it is worth having the churches just for the bells," Nancy conceded
on Sunday mornings when their music rang out from belfry and tower.

It was worth having the churches for more than the bells. But it was
useless to argue with Nancy. Her morals and Anthony's were
irreproachable. That is, from the modern point of view. They played
cards for small stakes, drank when they pleased, and, as I have
indicated, Nancy smoked. She was, also, not unkissed when Anthony asked
her to marry him. These were not the ideals of my girlhood, but Anthony
and Nancy felt that such small vices as they cultivated saved them from
the narrow-mindedness of their forebears.

"Anthony and I are going for a walk," she said. "I will bring you some
flowers for your bowls, Elizabeth."

It was just then that the yacht steamed into the harbor--majestically,
like a slow-moving swan. I picked out the name with my sea-glasses, _The
Viking_.

I handed the glasses to Nancy. "Never heard of it," she said. "Did you?"

"No," I answered. Most of the craft which came in were familiar, and I
welcomed them each year.

"Some new-rich person probably," Nancy decided. "Ducky, I have a feeling
that the owner of _The Viking_ bought it from the proceeds of pills or
headache powders."

"Or pork."

I am not sure that Nancy and I were justified in our disdain--whale-oil
has perhaps no greater claim to social distinction than bacon and ham
or--pills.

The church bells were ringing, and I had to go down. Nancy stayed on the
roof.

"Send Anthony up if he's there," she said; "we will sit here aloft like
two cherubs and look down on you, and you will wish that you were with
us."

But I knew that I should not wish it; that I should be glad to walk
along the shaded streets with my friends and neighbors, to pass the
gardens that were yellow with sunlight, and gay with l