easy sociability.

Cynthia meanwhile had slipped around the end of the counter and came up
to them. She wanted to see the woman who had been to school with her
mother. Then her mother was a little girl, perhaps no older than she.
Did she like it? Cynthia wondered.

"This is Captain Leverett's little daughter," Rachel announced rather
stiffly.

"My--but you don't favor your mother at all. I'm Mrs. Turner and I knew
her off and on. We lived about thirty miles above here. Then her folks
died and she went to Boston, but she used to be at the Leveretts' a good
deal. I married and came here. I'm living up North River way and have a
house full of children--like steps--and one grandchild, and I'm just on
the eve of thirty-seven. I've one little girl about your age, but she's
ever so much bigger. I'd like you to be friends with her. The next older
is a girl, too. Why, you'd have real nice times if the old aunties were
willing. Do they keep her strict? And she's going to be a considerable
heiress, I heard. I wonder where her eyes came from? They're not
Leverett eyes, and her mother's were a clear blue, real china blue, but
then there's different blues in china," and she laughed. "Sad about the
captain, wasn't it? He should have lived to enjoy his fortune, and now
his little girl will have it all. I must come and scrape acquaintance
for the sake of my girls. You'd like them, I know, they're full of fun.
We're not strait-laced people--that's going out of date."

Then she passed on. They wandered about a little more among the vases
and jars and the paintings on silk. The air was heavy with sandalwood,
and attar of rose, and incense. The fragrance seemed never to die out of
those old things that became family heirlooms.

"Come," Rachel said, taking her by the hand. It was quite late in the
afternoon now, and the shadows of everything were growing longer. She
could not understand why it was at first, but now she knew. And the sun
would be round there in Asia presently. In her secret heart she still
believed the sun went round and the earth stood still, for in the
movement people _must_ slip off. But then what held it in the air?
Cousin Chilian had a globe, but you see there was a strong wire through
the middle, fastened to the frame at both ends. Perhaps the earth was
fastened somewhere! She liked to make it revolve on its axis, and in
imagination she crossed the oceans, and seas, and capes, and found her
father again.

The sta