There was something a little mid-Victorian about Evie, and the only
blot on Aunt Georgy's perfect liberalism was that in her heart she
preferred her to the more modern nieces. Evie parted her thick
light-brown hair in the middle and had a little pointed chin, like a
picture in an old annual or a flattered likeness of Queen Victoria as a
girl. She was small and decidedly pretty, though not a beauty like her
large, rollicking, black-haired cousin Norma.
Norma's love affairs--if they were love affairs, and whether they were
or not was a topic often discussed about the blue satin sofa--were
carried on with the utmost candor. Suddenly one day it would become
evident that Norma was dancing, golfing, motoring with a new young man.
Everybody would report to Aunt Gregory the number of hours a day that
he and Norma spent together, and Aunt Gregory would say to Norma, "Are
you in love with him, Norma?" and Norma would answer "Yes" or "No" or
"I'm trying to find out."
"There's no mystery about this generation," Fanny would say.
"Why should there be?" Norma would say, and would stamp out again, and
would be heard hailing the young man of the minute, "We're considered
minus on romance, Bill"; and ten of them would get into a car intended
for four and drive away, looking like a basketful of puppies.
But about little Evie's love affairs there was some mystery. Aunt
Georgy did not know that Evie had ever spoken to the mayor--a
middle-aged banker of great wealth--and yet one day when he came to
tell Miss Hadley about the museum he told her instead about how Evie
had refused to marry him, and how unhappy he was. The nice young
clergyman, too, who preached so interestingly and pleased the parish in
every detail, was thinking of getting himself transferred to a city in
California because the sight of an attentive but unattainable Evie in
the front pew every Sunday almost broke his heart.
Aunt Georgy exonerated Evie from blame as far as the mayor was
concerned, but she wasn't so sure about the Reverend Mr. Gordon.
"Evie," she said, "did you try to enmesh that nice-looking man of God?"
Evie shook her head.
"I don't get anywhere if I try, Aunt Georgy," she answered. "It has to
come of itself or not at all. If Norma sees a man she fancies she swims
out after him like a Newfoundland dog. But I have to sit on the shore
until the tide washes something up at my feet. I don't always like what
it washes up either."
The simile amused Aunt Georgy, but the more she reflected the more she
doubted its accuracy. Those tides that washed things up--Evie had some
mysterious control of them, whether she knew it or not. Evie's method
and Norma's differed enormously in technic, but wasn't the elemental
aggression about the same?