All of the children’s toys seem to come from the eighteenth century: no plastic, no batteries, no jingles or flashing lights. Hardcover books stock wall-to-wall shelves; the cats match the furniture; the furniture is surprising. Logs in the fireplace. Mahogany floors. Tiffany treads in this flood of beauty, overwhelmed nearly to tears. She feels like one of those cows in the wake of a hurricane, swimming without a destination, doomed by a task that she was not designed to perform.
