whose names were household words throughout the nation—and yet, whether it was due to the innate democracy of the occasion, the almost childish pleasure and anticipation which the Fourth of July and its fireworks renewed in them, and the grand and natural warmth and spaciousness of the scene—their native earth, or whether the quality of their lives was really warm and free and friendly, there was nothing at all arrogant, haughty, cold or insolently “societyfied” about these people. Their gathering together here upon the front porch of this gloomy old Victorian house had exactly the same quality that these summer front-porch gatherings had always had for him everywhere in little towns; with a feeling of incredulous recognition he found that the scene was instantly familiar to him, and he almost expected to hear old familiar voices—his father’s voice among them, as he had heard it on the porch at home so many times, and now so long ago.
Everyone in the crowd knew the Pierce family and instantly welcomed them in an eager, laughing, and excited babel of affectionate greeting. Rosalind and Joel and Mrs. Pierce went about among the crowd shaking hands and greeting people all about them, and when the greetings were over, simply and naturally found their place among those persons to whom each was most akin by virtue of friendship, age, or temperament—Mrs. Pierce among men and women of her own generation and among the older people, and Joel, Rosalind, George Thornton, and Carl Seaholm among the younger people of the gathering.
Joel introduced him quickly, casually, with his infinite grace and consideration, to several people—to several of his younger friends and to certain of the older ones who were obviously among the best-liked and most respected people there. He was introduced to Mrs. Paston, a tall and beautiful young woman, very slender, blond, and lovely-looking: a kind of exquisite blond icicle, and with no more human warmth or passion than an icicle of any sort would have. She gave him a few cool words of greeting, a swift cool clasp of her swift cool hand, a swift, glacial, yet not unfriendly smile, and so dismissed him, not unkindly, turning with the same cool, smiling and glacial detachment to her other guests.
Suddenly the fireworks started. Far away, at the end of the great lawn, in the obscuring darkness of the night, and among the obscuring shadows of the shrubs and trees above the hill that swept down towards the
