landscape; they seemed to bend toward it, exhibit it with leafy hands extended, offering it to the walkers. Auberon and Cloud watched the others top the rise and pass through the portals into that place, enter into sunlight, look around themselves, and, walking downwards, disappear.
Hills and Dales
"When I was a girl," Momdy said, "we used to go back and forth quite a bit."
The checkered tablecloth around which they were all disposed had been spread in the sun but was now in the shade of the great solitary maple by which they had camped. Great damage had been inflicted on the ham and the fried chicken and a chocolate cake; two bottles lay fallen, and a third canted over, nearly done for. A flying squadron of black ants had just reached the outskirts of the field, and were relaying the message back: great good luck.
"The Hills and the Dales," Momdy said, "always had connections with the City. Hill is my mother's name, you know," she said to Smoky, who did. "Oh, it was fun in the thirties, taking the train in; having lunch; going to see our Hill cousins. Now the Hills hadn't always lived in the City. . . ."
"Are these the Hills," Sophie asked from beneath the straw hat she had tilted over her face against the generous sun, "that are still up in Highland?"
"That's a branch," Momdy said. "My Hills never had much to do with the Highland Hills. The story is . . ."
"The story is long," Doc said. He lifted his wineglass to the sun (he always insisted on real glasses and silverware at picnics, the out-of-doors luxury of them made a picnic a feast) and watched the sun caught in it. "And the Highland Hills get the best of it."
"Not so," Momdy said. "How do you know what story the story is?"
"A little bird told me," Doc said, chuckling, indulging himself. He stretched out, back against the maple, and pulled his panama (as old almost as himself) into snooze position. Momdy's reminiscences had in recent years got longer, more rambling and repetitious, as her ears had got deafer; but she never minded being apprised of it. She went right on.
"The Hills in the City," she said to all of them, "were really very splendid. Of course back then it was nothing to have a servant or two, but they had flocks. Nice Irish girls. Marys and Bridgets and Kathleens. They had such stories. Well. The City Hills more or less died out. Some of them went out west, to the Rockies. Except one girl about Nora's age then who married a Mr. Townes, and they stayed. That was a wonderful wedding. The first where I cried. She wasn't beautiful, and she was no spring chicken; and she already had a daughter by a previous husband, what was his name, who hadn't lasted, so this Townes man—what was his first name— was quite a catch, oh dear you can't talk that way nowadays can you; and all those maids lined up in their starched outfits, congratulations, missus, congratulytions. Her family was so happy for her . . ."
"All the Hills," Smoky said, "danced for joy."
". . . and it was their daughter or rather her daughter, Phyllis, you see, who later on, about the time I got married, met Stanley Mouse, which is how that family and my family get connected in a roundabout way. Phyllis. Who was a Hill on her mother's side. George and Franz's mother."
"Parturient montes," Smoky quipped into the void, "et nascetur ridiculus mus."
Momdy nodded thoughtfully. "Ireland in those days was a dreadfully poor place, of course . . . ."
"Ireland?" Doc said, looking up. "How did we get to Ireland?"
"One of those girls, Bridget I think," Momdy said, turning to her husband, "was it Bridget, or Mary? later married Jack Hill when his wife died. Now his wife . . ."
Smoky quietly rolled away from her discourse. Neither Doc nor Great-aunt Cloud were truly listening either, but as long as they stayed in more or less attentive poses, Momdy wouldn't notice his defection. Auberon sat cross-legged apart from them, preoccupied (Smoky wondered if he had ever seen him otherwise occupied) and tossing an apple up and down in his hand. He was looking sharply at Smoky, and Smoky wondered if he meant to shy the apple at him. Smoky smiled, thought of a joke to make, but since Auberon's expression didn't change he decided against it, and, standing up, changed his