Aunt Susan said that was so, and the worst of it is they’re spending more money than they used to spend, and father said, well, anyhow, that wasn’t a very common complaint with some people and he left the room. He never stays long in the room with Aunt S.

“I think the Pinckneys are real nice.”

“Mr. Simon Mascarene from Richmond and his wife came to see us to-day and stay for a week. They drove here in their own carriage with four brown horses and you could not tell which horse was which, they are so alike, they are very fine people and Mr. M. has a red face—not the same red as Mr. Simon Pinckney’s, but different somehow—more like an apple, and a high nose which makes him look very grand and fine.” The same Simon Mascarene, no doubt, that came to the wedding of Charles Pinckney in 1880 as old Simon Mascarene, the one whose flowered carpet bag still lingered in the memory of Miss Pinckney.

“Mrs. M. is very fine too and beautifully dressed and mother gave her a great bouquet of geraniums and garden flowers with a live green caterpillar looping about in the green stuff which nobody saw but me, till it fell on Mrs. M.’s knee and she screamed. There is to be a big party to-morrow and the Pinckneys are coming and Rupert.”

There the diary ended.

Phyl put it back on the shelf with the books. 144

144

She had not the knowledge necessary to visualise the people referred to, those people of another day when Planters kept open house, when slaves were slaves and Bures the home of the old gentleman with the musical snuff-box, but she could visualise Juliet as a child. The writing in the little book had brought the vision up warm from the past and it seemed almost as though she might suddenly run in from the sunlit piazza that lay beyond the waving window curtains.

There was a bureau in one corner, or rather one of those structures that went by the name of Davenports in the days of our fathers. Phyl went to it and raised the lid. She did so without a second thought or any feeling that it was wrong to poke about in a place like this and pry into secrets. Juliet seemed to belong to her as though she had been a sister, her own likeness to the dead girl was a bond of attraction stronger than a family tie, and Juliet’s mournful love story completed the charm.

The desk contained very little, a seal with a dove on it, some sticks of spangled sealing-wax, a paper knife of coloured wood with a picture of Benjamin 

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