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adequate toilette.”
    That evening the first formal dinner was a notable success. Becka was precise to a pin and his lordship even managed, with Sophia’s assistance, to maintain a generally adult conversation without excluding the child. Adela quietly joined the conversation from time to time but remained very much to herself.
    In any case, Adela could comfort herself with the knowledge that she had not in the end “primped” for dinner. Adela, who had always considered the extensive preparation necessary to attend a formal dinner to be a waste of precious time, was reasonably mollified by the fact that her limited wardrobe and functional hairstyle made such preparations minimal. Fortunately, his lordship, Becka, and Sophia all had enough tact not to comment on Miss Trowle’s appearance, although Sophia later confided to Waterston that Adela Trowle, in her Sunday best, looked like nothing so much as a widow at a Quaker funeral.
    Several days later Rebecka confronted Adela directly when they were working together in the music room.
    “Oh, dear, Adela, is that the most modish dress you have?”
    “Yes it is, Becka.” And in response to the obvious criticism in the child’s face she continued, “I’m afraid I am not in the absolute height of fashion, but I can assure you I feel quite comfortable the way I am.”
    “Are you still in mourning for your father?” Rebecka asked slowly.
    “Mourning for my father?—No, of course not. Why do you ask?”
    “But Adela, you never wear colors.”
    Adela hesitated a moment and glanced down at her pearl gray walking dress. “I hadn’t noticed, but I believe you are correct. I do not wear colors, Becka. I suppose it is strange. Perhaps I am in mourning for my mother and my brother.”
    Becka seemed confused. “I don’t understand, Adela. When did you lose them?”
    “My brother died about eight years ago and my mother—it has been fourteen years now, Becka.”
    “Eight and fourteen years! Then you cannot be in mourning for so long.”
    “My dear Rebecka, when you are my age you will come to realize that mourning has very little to do with a date on the calendar. Mourning is a state of one’s soul—it is timeless.”
    Rebecka had screwed up her face in confusion and was shaking her head. “Grown people are forever telling me I do not understand. But you are quite out there, Adela. I do understand about losing people. And I think it is wrong—it is positively selfish and wicked—to mourn for so long. I lost my mother three years ago. My mother was everything a mother could ever be. I lost her. I lost my father as well. I scarcely credit that because I seldom saw him. He was not like Uncle Charles. He was, I think you would call it, a wild young man and he died in a hunting accident when I was four. You were quite lucky, Adela. You had your own mother for twelve whole years and you had a little brother. I am only nine now and whom do I have? I have Uncle Charles, who is a dear but rather stiff, and I have you, who are in mourning for always. I am certain my mother is in heaven with your mother and your brother and I have no doubt that they are enjoying themselves excessively with God and the angels. Do you think they would approve of your Friday faces and your gray dresses?”
    For the moment Adela was completely nonplussed. And then she gathered the little weeping figure into her arms and waited for the tears to subside. Finally, taking a handkerchief and drying Rebecka’s eyes, Adela continued in a lighter vein, “Perhaps, Rebecka, I dress the way I do because I truly enjoy being a prune-faced spinster.”
    “Yes, I think you do, Adela. But it is unfair to the rest of us. Did you never think of marriage?”
    In an effort to keep the child’s attention from returning to her own losses, Adela began almost whimsically to answer her question, “Oh yes, when I was quite young and my brother was alive we would spin our dreams as all children do. When Jon was old