On fine afternoons Lottie often drove her mother and Aunt Charlotte to Jackson Park, drawing up at the curb along the lake walk. A glorious sight, that panorama. It was almost like being at sea, minus the discomfort of travel. The great blue inland ocean stretched before them, away, and away, and away until it met the sky. For the most part the three women did nothing. Mrs. Payson had always hated sewing. Great-aunt Charlotte sometimes knitted. Her eyes were not needed for that. But oftenest she sat there gazing out upon the restless expanse of Lake Michigan, her hands moving as restlessly as the shifting ageless waters. Great-aunt Charlotte's hands were seldom still. Always they moved over her lap, smoothing a bit of cloth, tracing an imaginary pattern with a wrinkled parchment forefinger; pleating a fold of her napkin when at table. Hands with brown splotches on the backs. Moving, moving, and yet curiously inactive. Sometimes Lottie read aloud, but not often. Her mother was restless at being read aloud to; besides, she liked stories with what is known as a business interest. Great-aunt Charlotte liked romance. No villain too dastardly--no heroine too lovely and misunderstood--no hero too ardent and athletic for Aunt Charlotte's taste. She swallowed them, boots, moonlight, automobiles, papers and all. "Such stuff!" Mrs. Carrie Payson would say. The conversation of the three women sitting there in the little glass-enclosed box was desultory, unvital. They had little to say to one another. Yet each would have been surprised to learn what a reputation for liveliness and wit the other had in her own circle. Lottie was known among "the girls" to be mischievous and gay; Carrie Payson could keep a swift and keen pace in conversation with a group of business men, or after a hand at bridge with women younger than she (Mrs. Payson did not care for the company of women of her own age); Great-aunt Charlotte's sallies and observations among her septuagenarian circle often brought forth a chorus of cackling laughter. Yet now: "Who's that coming along past the Iowa building?" (Relic of World's Fair days.) "I can't tell from here, mama." "Must be walking to reduce, with that figure, on a day like this. It's that Mrs. Deffler, isn't it, that lives near Belle's? No, it isn't. She's too dark. Yes it ... no...." Lottie said aloud, "No, it isn't." And within: "If I could only jump out of this old rattle-trap and into a boat--a boat with sails all spread--and away to that place over there that's the horizon. Oh, God, how I'd ... but I suppose I'd only land at Indiana Harbor instead of at the horizon." Then aloud again, "If you and Aunt Charlotte think you'll be comfortable here for twenty minutes or so I'll just walk up as far as the pier and back." "That's right," from Aunt Charlotte. "Do you good. What's more"--she chuckled an almost wicked chuckle--"I'd never come back, if I were you."