Nor was it only when they talked.

For often in long silences, when she thought he was reading his paper, she would glance up from her book and find him staring into the past.

And again at the piano, smoking and playing idly, his music made her realize how his mind was groping back through the years, picking and choosing here and there what he needed to build up his ideal.
This music at times made her curious, wondering what kind of a man he had been before Amy took him in hand.
"Where did you learn to play like that, Joe ?" He frowned a little.
"Oh, long ago." He did not seem to care to go back of his marriage.

So Ethel let him continue his building; and though at times she smiled a little at some of his fond recollections, still her own deep adoration of her older sister, the whirl of happy memories of that vivid month in town, and the sense of all that Amy had been planning to do for her, combined now with her desperate loneliness to put Ethel in a mood where she gladly and loyally believed almost anything good of her sister.
Christmas was only one example of many similar incidents.

They had a small Christmas tree for Susette, and they hung up her stocking as well, and went out Christmas Eve and bought candy canes and dogs and dolls and picture books.