The Whole Family | Page 6

she had inherited unimpaired from a New England
ancestry), at exactly half-past four every afternoon. It was this, she said,
more than any one thing that enabled her to go through so much as she
did; but through the door which she left open behind her my wife heard
Talbert's voice saying, in mixed mockery and tenderness, "Don't forget
your tonic, mother," and hers saying, "No, I won't, Cyrus. I never forget
it, and it's a great pity you don't take it, too."
It was our conclusion from all the facts of this call, when we came to
discuss them in the light of some friendly gossip which we had
previously heard, that the eldest daughter of the Talberts came honestly
by her love of ruling if she got it from her grandmother, but that she
was able to indulge it oftener, and yet not so often as might have been

supposed from the mild reticence of her mother. Older if not shrewder
observers than ourselves declared that what went in that house was
what Mrs. Talbert said, and that it went all the more effectively because
what she said Talbert said too.
That might have been because she said so little. When her mother left
the room she let a silence follow in which she seemed too embarrassed
to speak for a while on finding herself alone with my wife, and my wife
decided that the shyness of the girl whose engagement was soon
afterward reported, as well as the easy-goingness of the eldest son, had
come from their mother. As soon as Mrs. Talbert could command
herself, she began to talk, and every word she said was full of sense,
with a little gust of humor in the sense which was perfectly charming.
Absolutely unworldly as she was, she had very good manners; in her
evasive way she was certainly qualified to be the leader of society in
Eastridge, and socially Eastridge thought fairly well of itself. She did
not obviously pretend to so much literature as her mother, but she
showed an even nicer intelligence of our own situation in Eastridge.
She spoke with a quiet appreciation of the improvement in the Banner,
which, although she quoted Mr. Talbert, seemed to be the result of her
personal acquaintance with the paper in the past as well as the present.
My wife pronounced her the ideal mother of a family, and just what the
wife of such a man as Cyrus Talbert ought to be, but no doubt because
Mrs. Talbert's characteristics were not so salient as her mother's, my
wife was less definitely descriptive of her.
From time to time, it seemed that there was a sister of Mr. Talbert's
who visited in the family, but was now away on one of the many other
visits in which she passed her life. She was always going or coming
somewhere, but at the moment she was gone. My wife inferred from
the generation to which her brother belonged that she had long been a
lady of that age when ladies begin to be spoken of as maiden. Mrs.
Talbert spoke of her as if they were better friends than sisters-in-law
are apt to be, and said that she was to be with them soon, and she would
bring her with her when she returned my wife's call. From the general
impression in Eastridge we gathered that Miss Talbert was not without
the disappointment which endears maiden ladies to the imagination, but
the disappointment was of a date so remote that it was only matter of
pathetic hearsay, now. Miss Talbert, in her much going and coming,

had not failed of being several times in Europe. She especially affected
Florence, where she was believed to have studied the Tuscan School to
unusual purpose, though this was not apparent in any work of her own.
We formed the notion that she might be uncomfortably cultured, but
when she came to call with Mrs. Talbert afterward, my wife reported
that you would not have thought, except for a remark she dropped now
and then, that she had ever been out of her central New York village,
and so far from putting on airs of art, she did not speak of any gallery
abroad, or of the pensions in which she stayed in Florence, or the hotels
in other cities of Italy where she had stopped to visit the local schools
of painting.
In this somewhat protracted excursion I have not forgotten that I left
Mr. Talbert leaning against our party fence, with his arms resting on the
top, after a keen if not critical survey of his dwelling. He did not take
up our talk at just the point where we had been in it, but after a
reflective moment, he said, "I