IN the confusion, it seemed that even the pictures on the walls had come to life and were jostling about hugging, kissing, and shouting "Christmas Gift!" So many Phersons! Philip stood against the side of the upright piano, well out of the way, and watched them enter the room by twos and threes and sixes, joining the body of their family, being absorbed into its ceremony.

He was still trying to sort out the headstones on the hill, and the family portraits. But now, here were the living ones as well, all back again, as in October. So much was the same as then, Philip thought; except that this time, instead of standing about eating wedding cake, they were pulling off mufflers, tying on aprons, unpacking presents, and hurrying off to the kitchen with dishes wrapped in linen towels. With all their shifting about, appearing, and disappearing, they seemed determined to undermine the system he had devised for remembering them. For whether they looked out of a daguerreotype or out of a sleet-dripped cap, Phersons all seemed the same. Except for Mae, Philip thought loyally, they all had the same jaw, set against an indefinable purpose; all had the same smile, tilted a shade off innocence; and all, he felt uncomfortably sure, had that same glance, the one that angled past you before you ever fully materialized.

But the thing that he hadn't noticed until today was that they were not all Phersons. In spite of the similarities in their manner and appearance, some had only married Phersons.