boys, but their father, who was proud of her aquatic superiority, believed it was simple innocent fun. Then came the familyâs first swim of the summer when she was fourteen and her sodden bathing costume clung to her in startling new ways. âYou could see the fruit was getting ripe, if you know what I mean,â Jimmy said. Her evident physical bloom effected an abrupt change in Mr Bartlettâs outlook and he told her there would be no more swimming in company with boys. Lizzie alleged not to understand his objection and for days persisted in asking an explanation of him, and he would every time reiterate that it simply wasnât proper. But how was it improper, Lizzie would demand to know, and red-faced Mr Bartlett would sputter that she should ask her mother. âShe didnât have to ask Mum,â Jimmy said. âLizzie knew very well what Father was talking about. She was just deviling him for the fun of it. Itâs how sheâs always been.â
The same devilment was at the root of what Jimmy called the music scandal. His sister was a fine pianist, trained in the classics, but their parents had been unaware of the bohemian element in her repertoire until one evening when she was entertaining the family after supper and segued from âFür Eliseâ into a rousing dance-hall number of recent French import. Jimmy had heard her play the bawdy music once before, when their parents were away from the house, and had cautioned her against it, and sheâd shown him her tongue in retort. But as heâd warned, their mother was dismayed by the lewd composition and she ordered Lizzie to desist from it at once. Very well, the girl said, and banged the fallboard over the keys and got up from the bench andâ humming the sprightly tuneâdanced about the parlor with her skirts swirling to her knees. âMum barely spoke to her for the next couple of days,â Jimmy said.
Mrs Bartlett was finally pushed past her witâs end with her audacious daughter when the girl was seen mounted astride her stallion as she rode on the public road flanking their property. When Lizzie countered her motherâs angry reprimand with the contention that it was the more sensible as well as more comfortable way to ride, Mrs Bartlett called upon Mr Bartlett to prohibit her from riding until she promised to do so in the proper, sidesaddle fashion. Lizzie was so cross, Jimmy said, that she threatened to run away and live among the Indians. Her parents never knew for sure when she was joking, but such impertinence was anyway the concluding proof to Mrs Bartlett that the girl was in critical need of social remediation before it was too late. âDo something, Sebastian,â she told her husband.
Mr Bartlett dismissed Lizzieâs private tutors and enrolled her at the AthenianSeminary for her final year of schooling. Renowned for its instruction in the social graces as much as for its rigorous academic curriculum, the institution had molded more than one recalcitrant miss into a decorous young lady. When Elizabeth came home for Christmas holiday at the end of her first semester, she comported herself as the very model of refined femininity her mother had prayed for.
âThatâs when she sat for that picture on the wall,â Jimmy said.
And now, as John Roger and Jimmy stood talking on the riverside lawn, Mrs Bartlett came up behind them, saying, âJohn, dear, here is someone you must meet.â The happy matron was hugging the arm of the young woman she presented as her daughter, Elizabeth. In the dusky gold light of late afternoon the girl was smiling at him as in the painting. She was surprisingly tall, her eyes almost on a level with his, and both leaner and more buxom than her portrait suggested. He thought her even lovelier than her picture, and only by force of will kept his jaw from going slack.
âMr Wolfe,â she said, offering her hand, âJimmy has written me so