Then Mrs.Durrant got up and passed down the room, holding herself very straight, and the girls in yellow and blue and silver gauze followed her, and elderly Miss Eliot in her velvet; and a little rosy woman, hesitating at the door, clean, scrupulous, probably a governess.
All passed out at the open door.
"When you are as old as I am, Charlotte," said Mrs.Durrant, drawing the girl's arm within hers as they paced up and down the terrace.
"Why are you so sad ?" Charlotte asked impulsively.
"Do I seem to you sad?
I hope not," said Mrs.Durrant.
"Well, just now.

You're NOT old." "Old enough to be Timothy's mother." They stopped.
Miss Eliot was looking through Mr.Clutterbuck's telescope at the edge of the terrace.

The deaf old man stood beside her, fondling his beard, and reciting the names of the constellations: "Andromeda, Bootes, Sidonia, Cassiopeia...." "Andromeda," murmured Miss Eliot, shifting the telescope slightly.
Mrs.Durrant and Charlotte looked along the barrel of the instrument pointed at the skies.
"There are MILLIONS of stars," said Charlotte with conviction.

Miss Eliot turned away from the telescope.

The young men laughed suddenly in the dining-room.
"Let ME look," said Charlotte eagerly.
"The stars bore me," said Mrs.Durrant, walking down the terrace with Julia Eliot.