pretty price for such sherry as this. How old Adeline liked it! She threw back her head, her cap-ribbons trembling, to drain the last drop. Renny whispered: "I'll send some of this sherry to Fiddler's Hut for Eden. Some good porter would buck him up, too. Do him more good than milk." Alayne's thoughts flew on swift wings of compassion to Eden, stretched on the sofa in the next room. She had had a glimpse of him as she passed, covered with a magenta crocheted afghan. Confusing for him, she thought, all this robust conversation. Nicholas, Ernest, their mother, were all talking at once. About food. What Ernest had had to eat in New York; what Nicholas had eaten in London, twenty-five years ago. What Grandmother had eaten in India, seventy-five years ago. Augusta, in contralto tones, extolled the flavour of English strawberries, lettuce, and cauliflower. There was an altercation among Augusta, Renny, and Wakefield as to whether or not the child should eat the fat of his beef. Only Finch was silent, eating as though he would never get enough.
Sunshine, coming through the yellow blinds, bathed them all as in the thunderous glow of a Turner sunset. The salient features of each were mordantly emphasized. Grandmother's cap, her eyebrows, her nose; Augusta's fringe, the carriage of her head; Nicholas's shoulders, the sardonic droop of his moustache; Ernest's long white hands; Wake's glowing dark eyes; Renny's red head, his Court nose. And in the essence of them there was no conformation to a standard. Life had not hammered them, planed them, fitted them to any pattern. After the weary wit of the talk to which she had listened, rather than taken part in, at dinners of the past year, all this gusto, this spendthrift tossing away of energy! But perhaps they were right. Perhaps they had some secret which others had lost or were losing. They did not save themselves. They were built on a wasteful plan. Like shouldering trees, they thrust down their roots, thrust out their limbs, strove with each other, battled with the elemental. They saw nothing strange or unlikely in themselves. They were the Whiteoaks of Jalna. There was nothing more to be said.
