The Longest Day of the Year

Daisy and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with adventuring and consequence that was never quite shattered. They accepted Tom and me, making only a polite, pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread at the moment itself. The two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch; four candles flickered on the table and the diminished wind.