"What on earth is that Irene is wearing?" asked Faith Blythe, chancing to glance out of the window to see the woman striding up from Rainbow Valley. In most of her dress, Irene looked completely normal—for Irene. She was wearing one of her fashion-plate gowns, a filmy, lavender chiffon concoction, that clung to her soft curves in a most alluring way. On her hands were little netted gloves, in a deep purple, and her hair was waved and loose about her face. But on her head! Irene was wearing a hat that made Faith gasp, and then laugh out loud. She had never seen a hat like that. If it could even be called a hat!

It looked to have had a previous life as a man's straw boater. But there its resemblance to anything hattish ended. From fore to aft, from brim to crown, this hat was covered with garish fake flowers. Orange, yellow, a sickly green—and was that a motheaten robin nestled among them? Red ribbons cascaded down from the back of the brim, over Irene's chiffoned shoulders, clashing horribly with the pale lilac fabric of her dress.

What, Faith wondered, had possessed her to wear such a thing? Had the woman lost her mind? Was she crazy, on top of everything else?

"I made it for her, Aunt Faith," said Claire Meredith, sitting at the kitchen table, swinging her legs happily as she licked the bowl in which her aunt had just been mixing batter for a cake. The ribbons in her velvety brown hair matched the ones on Irene's hat, which should have been enough to give her away. "The hat was an old one of grandfather's," she explained. "And I found the flowers and things in a box in the garret."

"You're responsible for that abomination, Clairie?"

"You don't like it?" Claire asked, innocently.

"Like it! Dear heart, it looks like a circus exploded on her head!"

"It's supposed to look that way." Claire delicately licked her spoon. "It's avant-garde," she explained, with the perfect French flourish. Then she grinned. "Auntie Irene didn't like it when she first saw it, either. But I had worked so hard on it, Aunt Faith. And I was just devastated that she didn't want to wear it. Uncle Shirley saw that I felt bad, so he whispered in her ear. And Irene said, 'Oh, all right,' and put it on and hasn't dared to take it off, since."

Claire made this little speech in a completely guileless tone of voice, but there was some hint of mischief in her grin that made Faith look at her more closely. "I didn't know you were so interested in millinery, darling."

"I am," Claire cheerfully assured her. "I just love it. I suppose I'm going to be a famous fashion designer one day, in Paris or something."

"Or something," said Faith dubiously, peeking back out the window at Irene. "Goodness, her dress is sopping wet! Look at her, trying to wring it out."

"Oh," remarked Claire, with a dismissive wave of her small white hand. "Well, I expect that's because the boys took her boating on the Glen Pond this afternoon.

"Irene, boating with the boys?"

"It's so hot today," said Claire, in tones of perfect angelic delight. "Irene complained of it and the boys offered to take her out. 'That's a capital idea,' Uncle Shirley said, so she had to go. It would have been rude of her to refuse. And how could poor Cam know that when he stood up, it would tip them all out?"

"I think he might know from experience," Faith guessed. "He's done it enough times before. When this cake is in the oven I'll go upstairs and find a nice dress for Irene to wear while her gown dries. It's getting cool, and she'll catch a chill going around like that."

"I already offered her one of Grandmother's old housecoats," Claire told her aunt, using her finger to scrape up the batter that her spoon had missed. "She said she didn't want to wear it. I guess she's too good to wear clothes that didn't come from Boston. She'd rather be all wet." Claire neglected to tell her aunt that the housecoat she had found for Irene came straight from the rag-bag, missing a couple of buttons and splotched with ink and that nobody in their right mind would have wanted to wear it. Claire lifted the bowl up to her face to use her tongue to reach the places the spoon had missed, and also, to hide her triumphant grin. When she set it down again, she asked, "When the cake is done, Aunt Faith, might I come back in and have a piece?"

"Not until after supper," Faith told her. "This cake is for your Uncle Carl. He's coming in tonight."

"Uncle Carl! Really? But I thought he couldn't get away from his work at the university?"

"It appears, after all, he can," said Faith. "Now give me that bowl. There's no more batter in it. You're just scraping away the paint by going over and over it like that."

Claire handed over the bowl and ran out. She waved in a broad arc to Irene as she passed her, and called out in a booming voice, "Hi, Auntie!" Faith watched this scene, her golden eyes growing suspicious. What on earth were the children up to? Yesterday they wouldn't go near Irene on penalty of death, as though she was infected with a dread disease, and they were afraid of catching it. Now, a scant twenty-four hours later, they were so friendly with her? Going boating with her? Calling her not just 'aunt' but 'auntie'—a title reserve for their favorite of that ilk? Faith narrowed her eyes and turned, in time to see Helen come into the kitchen.

"Stop right there," she commanded her younger daughter, catching her arm on the way out the door. "Helen Cornelia Blythe, I want to know what's going on and I want to know right now."

Helen looked anxiously at her mother, and Faith remembered how sensitive the child was, how frightened she got when anybody spoke to her sharply. Poor little bird! She pulled Helen to her chest and stroked her fair hair for a moment, thinking what a pity it was that her daughter was not surer of herself, that she had no confidence to speak of. Faith knew that this was not one of Helen's own failings, that it must be something of her own fault, and that to combat it, she must be sure to treat Helen with extra gentleness.

But still, she was determined to get to the bottom of this. "Are you children deviling Irene in some way?" Faith wanted to know. "Tell me the truth, Helen. What are you imps planning?"

Helen had her face pressed to her mother's shoulder, so Faith could not see the struggle that played upon her face. Helen had never—never—lied to Mother before! And she didn't want to do it, now. But she had promised the others—she had shaken on it—that she would not 'tattle.' Was answering a direct question tattling? She did not think it was.

But all the same Helen knew that the others would not see it that way. If she told her mother the truth, everyone would be angry with her for spoiling things. They would shun her, terribly, and if there was one thing Helen feared above all else, it was that people should stop loving her. Perhaps they would even turn against her, and 'devil' her the way that they were deviling Irene! She blanched in horror at the thought, and quickly composed herself. When she lifted her face to meet her mother's searching look, her eyes were bleak, but she was determined: she should not let the others down.

"We're not planning anything, Mother," Helen whispered. "We only—want—to try to make friends with Aunt Irene because Uncle Shirley wants us to and we love him." There! There some truth in that sentence. They did love Uncle Shirley, and Helen at least, sincerely did want to make friends with Aunt Irene. Surely the lie could not count for so much when those other things were true?

Faith searched her face a moment longer, and then relaxed her hold into a hug. Of course Helen would tell her the truth—Helen the sweet, Helen the good. She whispered into her daughter's shell-like ear, "If you can sneak away in an hour, come back in and I'll give you a piece of cake."

Helen's face was astonished at the very idea. "But I couldn't, Mother! That cake is for Uncle Carl's. And if the others don't get a piece, too, it wouldn't be fair me to have one."

"Oh, Helen," sighed Faith, despairingly. "You are the most exasperating child."

Sally read the next chapter of her epic that night in Rainbow Valley. It was called 'Legacy of the Blythe Family,' and based heavily on the Biblical book of First Chronicles, telling who the sons of everybody were, and peppered liberally with begats. At one point, when the Lord 'slew' Susan Baker, the grownups had to turn their faces away and hide them in their hands, but by the time Sally had finished they had composed themselves again. Everyone clapped heartily for her handiwork, as Sally took, what she thought, was a very restrained and writerly bow.

"I thought of spicing up the names," she confessed. "The ones in the Bible were so interesting. Jehoshaphat and Zerubabbel and Azrikam. Sally and Jem and Nan just don't compare to them. But this is a history, not a novel, and I had to restrict myself to recorded fact. Although Mother, if you ever have another child, won't you let me name it?"

"Sally, if that very unlikely thing ever happens, then you may," her mother told her. "I will even agree to Zerubabbel for this mythical brother or sister of yours. That is how sure I am it shall never come to pass."

"I think we have some fine names in our connection already," said Uncle Carl, who had been plied with cake and was now stretched out languorously on the grass. He was wearing a khaki safari jacket, the kind with many, many pockets, and when the children had run up and hugged him, earlier, he had cried out, remembering a specimen of beetle he had never seen before, found on the way home from the train station, and secreted in one of them. If Cam had brought a heap of bugs inside the house Mother would have walloped him, but if Uncle Carl did it, it was fine. Although, Sally noticed, Mother never did let Uncle Carl sleep at Ingleside. "We have Diana, goddess of the hunt." Aunt Di smiled at him, through the deepening darkness. "We have Una, which is a name I have never come across except in our Una. And we have Thomas Carlyle, which I've always thought a fairly distinguished name, myself."

"And we have Irene," said Shirley, who was sitting with his arm around her. Irene had been uncharacteristically quiet all evening, and it must be admitted that even though Sally's epic was written especially for her, most of the Blythes and Merediths and Fords had forgotten she was there. Now that they remembered, a little of the languid beauty of the night was gone. The grownups felt it and were ashamed that they should feel it. The children, who were young enough still to believe all of their passions were valid, felt it and resented her for it.

Carl rolled over onto his back and studied the moon, a tiny sliver of white low down in the sky. "That moon belongs to you, Di," he smiled. "For Diana was also the Roman goddess of the moon. 'Red sky at night, sailor's delight,' too—we'll have fine weather tomorrow. Kids, how about a visit to the seashore in the morning? Isn't that a great idea?"

"It is," laughed Walt. "So much of a good one that we already asked Aunt Irene to take us."

Uncle Carl held up his hands. "I know when I'm not wanted," he said, with mock crestfallenness. "Irene, you popular woman, usurping my place."

The darkness was growing deeper in the pools and hollows of the Valley, and they could not see Irene's face. But they thought they heard her sigh, as if to say Carl could have his place, because she did not want it. .