The Lottery and Other Stories

The Witch

THE COACH was so nearly empty that the little boy had a seat all to himself, and his mother sat across the aisle on the seat next to the little boy’s sister, a baby with a piece of toast in one hand and a rattle in the other. She was strapped securely to the seat so she could sit up and look around, and whenever she began to slip slowly sideways the strap caught her and held her halfway until her mother turned around and straightened her again. The little boy was looking out the window and eating a cookie, and the mother was reading quietly, answering the little boy’s questions without looking up.

“We’re on a river,” the little boy said. “This is a river and we’re on it.”

“Fine,” his mother said.

“We’re on a bridge over a river,” the little boy said to himself.

The few other people in the coach were sitting at the other end of the car; if any of them had occasion to come down the aisle the little boy would look around and say, “Hi,” and the stranger would usually say, “Hi,” back and sometimes ask the little boy if he were enjoying the train ride, or even tell him he was a fine big fellow. These comments annoyed the little boy and he would turn irritably back to the window.

“There’s a cow,” he would say, or, sighing, “How far do we have to go?”

“Not much longer now,” his mother said, each time.

Once the baby, who was very quiet and busy with her rattle and her toast, which the mother would renew constantly, fell over too far sideways and banged her head. She began to cry, and for a minute there was noise and movement around the mother’s seat. The little boy slid down from his own seat and ran across the aisle to pet his sister’s feet and beg her not to cry, and finally the baby laughed and went back to her toast, and the little boy received a lollipop from his mother and went back to the window.

“I saw a witch,” he said to his mother after a minute. “There was a big old ugly old bad old witch outside.”

“Fine,” his mother said.

“A big old ugly witch and I told her to go away and she went away,” the little boy went on, in a quiet narrative to himself, “she came and said, ‘I’m going to eat you up,’ and I said, ‘no, you’re not,’ and I chased her away, the bad old mean witch.”

He stopped talking and looked up as the outside door of the coach opened and a man came in. He was an elderly man, with a pleasant face under white hair; his blue suit was only faintly touched by the disarray that comes from a long train trip. He was carrying a cigar, and when the little boy said, “Hi,” the man gestured at him with the cigar and said, “Hello yourself, son.” He stopped just beside the little boy’s seat, and leaned against the back, looking down at the little boy, who craned his neck to look upward. “What you looking for out that window?” the man asked.

“Witches,” the little boy said promptly. “Bad old mean witches.”

“I see,” the man said. “Find many?”

“My father smokes cigars,” the little boy said.

“All men smoke cigars,” the man said. “Someday you’ll smoke a cigar, too.”

“I’m a man already,” the little boy said.

“How old are you?” the man asked.

The little boy, at the eternal question, looked at the man suspiciously for a minute and then said, “Twenty-six. Eight hunnerd and forty eighty.”

His mother lifted her head from the book. “Four,” she said, smiling fondly at the little boy.

“Is that so?” the man said politely to the little boy. “Twenty-six.” He nodded his head at the mother across the aisle. “Is that your mother?”

The little boy leaned forward to look and then said, “Yes, that’s her.”

“What’s your name?” the man asked.

The little boy looked suspicious again. “Mr. Jesus,” he said.

“Johnny,” the little boy’s mother said. She caught the little boy’s eye and frowned deeply.

“That’s my sister over there,” the little boy said to the man. “She’s twelve-and-a-half.”

“Do you love your sister?” the man asked. The little boy stared, and the man came around the side of the seat and sat down next to the little boy. “Listen,” the man said, “shall I tell you about my little sister?”

The mother, who had looked up anxiously when the man sat down next to her little boy, went peacefully back to her book.

“Tell me about your sister,” the little boy said. “Was she a witch?”

“Maybe,” the man said.

The little boy laughed excitedly, and the man leaned back and puffed at his cigar. “Once upon a time,” he began, “I had a little sister, just like yours.” The little boy looked up at the man, nodding at every word. “My little sister,” the man went on, “was so pretty and so nice that I loved her more than anything else in the world. So shall I tell you what I did?”

The little boy nodded more vehemently, and the mother lifted her eyes from her book and smiled, listening.

“I bought her a rocking-horse and a doll and a million lollipops,” the man said, “and then I took her and I put my hands around her neck and I pinched her and I pinched her until she was dead.”

The little boy gasped and the mother turned around, her smile fading. She opened her mouth, and then closed it again as the man went on, “And then I took and I cut her head off and I took her head—”

“Did you cut her all in pieces?” the little boy asked breathlessly.

“I cut off her head and her hands and her feet and her hair and her nose,” the man said, “and I hit her with a stick and I killed her.”

“Wait a minute,” the mother said, but the baby fell over sideways just at that minute and by the time the mother had set her up again the man was going on.

“And I took her head and I pulled out all her hair and—”

“Your little sister?” the little boy prompted eagerly.

“My little sister,” the man said firmly. “And I put her head in a cage with a bear and the bear ate it all up.”

“Ate her head all up?” the little boy asked.

The mother put her book down and came across the aisle. She stood next to the man and said, “Just what do you think you’re doing?” The man looked up courteously and she said, “Get out of here.”

“Did I frighten you?” the man said. He looked down at the little boy and nudged him with an elbow and he and the little boy laughed.

“This man cut up his little sister,” the little boy said to his mother.

“I can very easily call the conductor,” the mother said to the man.

“The conductor will eat my mommy,” the little boy said. “We’ll chop her head off.”

“And little sister’s head, too,” the man said. He stood up, and the mother stood back to let him get out of the seat. “Don’t ever come back in this car,” she said.

“My mommy will eat you,” the little boy said to the man.

The man laughed, and the little boy laughed, and then the man said, “Excuse me,” to the mother and went past her out of the car. When the door had closed behind him the little boy said, “How much longer do we have to stay on this old train?”

“Not much longer,” the mother said. She stood looking at the little boy, wanting to say something, and finally she said, “You sit still and be a good boy. You may have another lollipop.”

The little boy climbed down eagerly and followed his mother back to her seat. She took a lollipop from a bag in her pocketbook and gave it to him. “What do you say?” she asked.

“Thank you,” the little boy said. “Did that man really cut his little sister up in pieces?”

“He was just teasing,” the mother said, and added urgently, “Just teasing.”

“Prob’ly,” the little boy said. With his lollipop he went back to his own seat, and settled himself to look out the window again. “Prob’ly he was a witch.”

The Renegade

IT WAS EIGHT-TWENTY in the morning. The twins were loitering over their cereal, and Mrs. Walpole, with one eye on the clock and the other on the kitchen window past which the school bus would come in a matter of minutes, felt the unreasonable irritation that comes with being late on a school morning, the wading-through-molasses feeling of trying to hurry children.

“You’ll have to walk,” she said ominously, for perhaps the third time. “The bus won’t wait.”

“I’m hurrying,” Judy said. She regarded her full glass of milk smugly. “I’m closer to through than Jack.”

Jack pushed his glass across the table and they measured meticulously, precisely. “No,” he said. “Look how much more you have than me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Walpole said, “it doesn’t matter. Jack, eat your cereal.”

“She didn’t have any more than me to start with,” Jack said. “Did she have any more than me, Mom?”

The alarm clock had not gone off at seven as it should. Mrs. Walpole heard the sound of the shower upstairs and calculated rapidly; the coffee was slower than usual this morning, the boiled eggs a shade too soft. She had only had time to pour herself a glass of fruit juice and no time to drink it. Someone—Judy or Jack or Mr. Walpole—was going to be late.

“Judy,” Mrs. Walpole said mechanically, “Jack.”

Judy’s hair was not accurately braided. Jack would get off without his handkerchief. Mr. Walpole would certainly be irritable.

The yellow-and-red bulk of the school bus filled the road outside the kitchen window, and Judy and Jack streaked for the door, cereal uneaten, books most likely forgotten. Mrs. Walpole followed them to the kitchen door, calling, “Jack, your milk money; come straight home at noon.” She watched them climb into the school bus and then went briskly to work clearing their dishes from the table and setting a place for Mr. Walpole. She would have to have breakfast herself later, in the breathing-spell that came after nine o’clock. That meant her wash would be late getting on the line, and if it rained that afternoon, as it certainly might, nothing would be dry. Mrs. Walpole made an effort, and said, “Good morning, dear,” as her husband came into the kitchen. He said, “Morning,” without glancing up and Mrs. Walpole, her mind full of unfinished sentences that began, “Don’t you think other people ever have any feelings or—” started patiently to set his breakfast before him. The soft-boiled eggs in their dish, the toast, the coffee. Mr. Walpole devoted himself to his paper, and Mrs. Walpole, who wanted desperately also to say, “I don’t suppose you notice that I haven’t had a chance to eat—” set the dishes down as softly as she could.

Everything was going smoothly, although half-an-hour late, when the telephone rang. The Walpoles were on a party line, and Mrs. Walpole usually let the phone ring her number twice before concluding that it was really their number; this morning, before nine o’clock, with Mr. Walpole not half-through his breakfast, it was an unbearable intrusion, and Mrs. Walpole went reluctantly to answer it. “Hello,” she said forbiddingly.

“Mrs. Walpole,” the voice said, and Mrs. Walpole said, “Yes?” The voice—it was a woman—said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but this is—” and gave an unrecognizable name. Mrs. Walpole said, “Yes?” again. She could hear Mr. Walpole taking the coffeepot off the stove to pour himself a second cup.

“Do you have a dog? Brown-and-black hound?” the voice continued. With the word dog Mrs. Walpole, in the second before she answered, “Yes,” comprehended the innumerable aspects of owning a dog in the country (six dollars for spaying, the rude barking late at night, the watchful security of the dark shape sleeping on the rug beside the double-decker beds in the twins’ room, the inevitability of a dog in the house, as important as a stove, or a front porch, or a subscription to the local paper; more, and above any of these things, the dog herself, known among the neighbors as Lady Walpole, on an exact par with Jack Walpole or Judy Walpole; quiet, competent, exceedingly tolerant), and found in none of them a reason for such an early morning call from a voice which she realized now was as irritable as her own.

“Yes,” Mrs. Walpole said shortly, “I own a dog. Why?”

“Big brown-and-black hound?”

Lady’s pretty markings, her odd face. “Yes,” Mrs. Walpole said, her voice a little more impatient, “yes, that is certainly my dog. Why?”

“He’s been killing my chickens.” The voice sounded satisfied now; Mrs. Walpole had been cornered.

For several seconds Mrs. Walpole was quiet, so that the voice said, “Hello?”

“That’s perfectly ridiculous,” Mrs. Walpole said.

“This morning,” the voice said with relish, “your dog was chasing our chickens. We heard the chickens at about eight o’clock, and my husband went out to see what was the matter and found two chickens dead and he saw a big brown-and-black hound down with the chickens and he took a stick and chased the dog away and then he found two more dead ones. He says,” the voice went on flatly, “that it’s lucky he didn’t think to take his shotgun out with him because you wouldn’t have any more dog. Most awful mess you ever saw,” the voice said, “blood and feathers everywhere.”

“What makes you think it’s my dog?” Mrs. Walpole said weakly.

“Joe White—he’s a neighbor of yours—was passing at the time and saw my husband chasing the dog. Said it was your dog.”

Old man White lived in the next house but one to the Walpoles. Mrs. Walpole had always made a point of being courteous to him, inquired amiably about his health when she saw him on the porch as she passed, had regarded respectfully the pictures of his grandchildren in Albany.

“I see,” Mrs. Walpole said, suddenly shifting her ground. “Well, if you’re absolutely sure. I just can’t believe it of Lady. She’s so gentle.”

The other voice softened, in response to Mrs. Walpole’s concern. “It is a shame,” the other woman said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that it happened. But…” her voice trailed off significantly.

“Of course we’ll take care of the damage,” Mrs. Walpole said quickly.

“No, no,” the woman said, almost apologetically. “Don’t even think about it.”

“But of course—” Mrs. Walpole began, bewildered.

“The dog,” the voice said. “You’ll have to do something about the dog.”

A sudden unalterable terror took hold of Mrs. Walpole. Her morning had gone badly, she had not yet had her coffee, she was faced with an evil situation she had never known before, and now the voice, its tone, its inflection, had managed to frighten Mrs. Walpole with a word like “something.”

“How?” Mrs. Walpole said finally. “I mean, what do you want me to do?”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the wire, and then the voice said briskly, “I’m sure I don’t know, missus. I’ve always heard that there’s no way to stop a chicken-killing dog. As I say, there was no damage to speak of. As a matter of fact, the chickens the dog killed are plucked and in the oven now.”

Mrs. Walpole’s throat tightened and she closed her eyes for a minute, but the voice went inflexibly on. “We wouldn’t ask you to do anything except take care of the dog. Naturally, you understand that we can’t have a dog killing our chickens?”

Realizing that she was expected to answer, Mrs. Walpole said, “Certainly.”

“So…” the voice said.

Mrs. Walpole saw over the top of the phone that Mr. Walpole was passing her on his way to the door. He waved briefly to her and she nodded at him. He was late; she had intended to ask him to stop at the library in the city. Now she would have to call him later. Mrs. Walpole said sharply into the phone, “First of all, of course, I’ll have to make sure it’s my dog. If it is my dog I can promise you you’ll have no more trouble.”

“It’s your dog all right.” The voice had assumed the country flatness; if Mrs. Walpole wanted to fight, the voice implied, she had picked just the right people.

“Good-bye,” Mrs. Walpole said, knowing that she was making a mistake in parting from this woman angrily; knowing that she should stay on the phone for an interminable apologetic conversation, try to beg her dog’s life back from this stupid inflexible woman who cared so much for her stupid chickens.

Mrs. Walpole put the phone down and went out into the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee and made herself some toast.

I am not going to let this bother me until after I have had my coffee, Mrs. Walpole told herself firmly. She put extra butter on her toast and tried to relax, moving her back against the chair, letting her shoulders sag. Feeling like this at nine-thirty in the morning, she thought, it’s a feeling that belongs with eleven o’clock at night. The bright sun outside was not as cheerful as it might be; Mrs. Walpole decided suddenly to put her wash off until tomorrow. They had not lived in the country town long enough for Mrs. Walpole to feel the disgrace of washing on Tuesday as mortal; they were still city folk and would probably always be city folk, people who owned a chicken-killing dog, people who washed on Tuesday, people who were not able to fend for themselves against the limited world of earth and food and weather that the country folk took so much for granted. In this situation as in all such others—the disposal of rubbish, the weather stripping, the baking of angel-food cake—Mrs. Walpole was forced to look for advice. In the country it is extremely difficult to “get a man” to do things for you, and Mr. and Mrs. Walpole had early fallen into the habit of consulting their neighbors for information which in the city would have belonged properly to the superintendent, or the janitor, or the man from the gas company. When Mrs. Walpole’s glance fell on Lady’s water dish under the sink, and she realized that she was indescribably depressed, she got up and put on her jacket and a scarf over her head and went next door.

Mrs. Nash, her next-door neighbor, was frying doughnuts, and she waved a fork at Mrs. Walpole at the open door and called, “Come in, can’t leave the stove.” Mrs. Walpole, stepping into Mrs. Nash’s kitchen, was painfully aware of her own kitchen with the dirty dishes in the sink. Mrs. Nash was wearing a shockingly clean house dress and her kitchen was freshly washed; Mrs. Nash was able to fry doughnuts without making any sort of a mess.

“The men do like fresh doughnuts with their lunch,” Mrs. Nash remarked without any more preamble than her nod and invitation to Mrs. Walpole. “I always try to get enough made ahead, but I never do.”

“I wish I could make doughnuts,” Mrs. Walpole said. Mrs. Nash waved the fork hospitably at the stack of still-warm doughnuts on the table and Mrs. Walpole helped herself to one, thinking: This will give me indigestion.

“Seems like they all get eaten by the time I finish making them,” Mrs. Nash said. She surveyed the cooking doughnuts and then, satisfied that she could look away for a minute, took one herself and began to eat it standing by the stove. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “You look sort of peaked this morning.”

“To tell you the truth,” Mrs. Walpole said, “it’s our dog. Someone called me this morning that she’s been killing chickens.”

Mrs. Nash nodded. “Up to Harris’,” she said. “I know.”

Of course she’d know by now, Mrs. Walpole thought.

“You know,” Mrs. Nash said, turning again to the doughnuts, “they do say there’s nothing to do with a dog kills chickens. My brother had a dog once killed sheep, and I don’t know what they didn’t do to break that dog, but of course nothing would do it. Once they get the taste of blood.” Mrs. Nash lifted a golden doughnut delicately out of the frying kettle, and set it down on a piece of brown paper to drain. “They get so’s they’d rather kill than eat, hardly.”

“But what can I do?” Mrs. Walpole asked. “Isn’t there anything?”

“You can try, of course,” Mrs. Nash said. “Best thing to do first is tie her up. Keep her tied, with a good stout chain. Then at least she won’t go chasing no more chickens for a while, save you getting her killed for you.”

Mrs. Walpole got up reluctantly and began to put her scarf on again. “I guess I’d better get a chain down at the store,” she said.

“You going downstreet?”

“I want to do my shopping before the kids come home for lunch.”

“Don’t buy any store doughnuts,” Mrs. Nash said. “I’ll run up later with a dishful for you. You get a good stout chain for that dog.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Walpole said. The bright sunlight across Mrs. Nash’s kitchen doorway, the solid table bearing its plates of doughnuts, the pleasant smell of the frying, were all symbols somehow of Mrs. Nash’s safety, her confidence in a way of life and a security that had no traffic with chicken-killing, no city fears, an assurance and cleanliness so great that she was willing to bestow its overflow on the Walpoles, bring them doughnuts and overlook Mrs. Walpole’s dirty kitchen. “Thank you,” Mrs. Walpole said again, inadequately.

“You tell Tom Kittredge I’ll be down for a pork roast later this morning,” Mrs. Nash said. “Tell him to save it for me.”

“I shall.” Mrs. Walpole hesitated in the doorway and Mrs. Nash waved the fork at her.

“See you later,” Mrs. Nash said.

Old man White was sitting on his front porch in the sun. When he saw Mrs. Walpole he grinned broadly and shouted to her, “Guess you’re not going to have any more dog.”

I’ve got to be nice to him, Mrs. Walpole thought, he’s not a traitor or a bad man by country standards; anyone would tell on a chicken-killing dog; but he doesn’t have to be so pleased about it, she thought, and tried to make her voice pleasant when she said, “Good morning, Mr. White.”

“Gonna have her shot?” Mr. White asked. “Your man got a gun?”

“I’m so worried about it,” Mrs. Walpole said. She stood on the walk below the front porch and tried not to let her hatred show in her face as she looked up at Mr. White.

“It’s too bad about a dog like that,” Mr. White said.

At least he doesn’t blame me, Mrs. Walpole thought. “Is there anything I can do?” she said.

Mr. White thought. “Believe you might be able to cure a chicken-killer,” he said. “You get a dead chicken and tie it around the dog’s neck, so he can’t shake it loose, see?”

“Around her neck?” Mrs. Walpole asked, and Mr. White nodded, grinning toothlessly.

“See, when he can’t shake it loose at first he tries to play with it and then it starts to bother him, see, and then he tries to roll it off and it won’t come and then he tries to bite it off and it won’t come and then when he sees it won’t come he thinks he’s never gonna get rid of it, see, and he gets scared. And then you’ll have him coming around with his tail between his legs and this thing hanging around his neck and it gets worse and worse.”

Mrs. Walpole put one hand on the porch railing to steady herself. “What do you do then?” she asked.

“Well,” Mr. White said, “the way I heard it, see, the chicken gets riper and riper and the more the dog sees it and feels it and smells it, see, the more he gets to hate chicken. And he can’t ever get rid of it, see?”

“But the dog,” Mrs. Walpole said. “Lady, I mean. How long do we have to leave it around her neck?”

“Well,” Mr. White said with enthusiasm, “I guess you leave it on until it gets ripe enough to fall off by itself. See, the head….”

“I see,” Mrs. Walpole said. “Would it work?”

“Can’t say,” Mr. White said. “Never tried it myself.” His voice said that he had never had a chicken-killing dog.

Mrs. Walpole left him abruptly; she could not shake the feeling that if it were not for Mr. White, Lady would not have been identified as the dog killing the chickens; she wondered briefly if Mr. White had maliciously blamed Lady because they were city folk, and then thought, No, no man around here would bear false witness against a dog.

When she entered the grocery it was almost empty; there was a man at the hardware counter and another man leaning against the meat counter talking to Mr. Kittredge, the grocer. When Mr. Kittredge saw Mrs. Walpole come in he called across the store, “Morning, Mrs. Walpole. Fine day.”

“Lovely,” Mrs. Walpole said, and the grocer said, “Bad luck about the dog.”

“I don’t know what to do about it,” Mrs. Walpole said, and the man talking to the grocer looked at her reflectively, and then back at the grocer.

“Killed three chickens up to Harris’s this morning,” the grocer said to the man and the man nodded solemnly and said, “Heard about that.”

Mrs. Walpole came across to the meat counter and said, “Mrs. Nash said would you save her a roast of pork. She’ll be down later to get it.”

“Going up that way,” the man standing with the grocer said. “Drop it off.”

“Right,” the grocer said.

The man looked at Mrs. Walpole and said, “Gonna have to shoot him, I guess?”

“I hope not,” Mrs. Walpole said earnestly. “We’re all so fond of the dog.”

The man and the grocer looked at one another for a minute, and then the grocer said reasonably, “Won’t do to have a dog going around killing chickens, Mrs. Walpole.”

“First thing you know,” the man said, “someone’ll put a load of buckshot into him, he won’t come home no more.” He and the grocer both laughed.

“Isn’t there any way to cure the dog?” Mrs. Walpole asked.

“Sure,” the man said. “Shoot him.”

“Tie a dead chicken around his neck,” the grocer suggested. “That might do it.”

“Heard of a man did that,” the other man said.

“Did it help?” Mrs. Walpole asked eagerly.

The man shook his head slowly and with determination.

“You know,” the grocer said. He leaned his elbow on the meat counter; he was a great talker. “You know,” he said again, “my father had a dog once used to eat eggs. Got into the chicken-house and used to break the eggs open and lick them up. Used to eat maybe half the eggs we got.”

“That’s a bad business,” the other man said. “Dog eating eggs.”

“Bad business,” the grocer said in confirmation. Mrs. Walpole found herself nodding. “Last, my father couldn’t stand it no more. Here half his eggs were getting eaten,” the grocer said. “So he took an egg once, set it on the back of the stove for two, three days, till the egg got good and ripe, good and hot through, and that egg smelled pretty bad. Then—I was there, boy twelve, thirteen years old—he called the dog one day, and the dog come running. So I held the dog, and my daddy opened the dog’s mouth and put in the egg, red-hot and smelling to heaven, and then he held the dog’s mouth closed so’s the dog couldn’t get rid of the egg anyway except swallow it.” The grocer laughed and shook his head reminiscently.

“Bet that dog never ate another egg,” the man said.

“Never touched another egg,” the grocer said firmly. “You put an egg down in front of that dog, he’d run’s though the devil was after him.”

“But how did he feel about you?” Mrs. Walpole asked. “Did he ever come near you again?”

The grocer and the other man both looked at her. “How do you mean?” the grocer said.

“Did he ever like you again?”

“Well,” the grocer said, and thought. “No,” he said finally, “I don’t believe you could say’s he ever did. Not much of a dog, though.”

“There’s one thing you ought to try,” the other man said suddenly to Mrs. Walpole, “you really want to cure that dog, there’s one thing you ought to try.”

“What’s that?” Mrs. Walpole said.

“You want to take that dog,” the man said, leaning forward and gesturing with one hand, “take him and put him in a pen with a mother hen’s got chicks to protect. Time she’s through with him he won’t never chase another chicken.”

The grocer began to laugh and Mrs. Walpole looked, bewildered, from the grocer to the other man, who was looking at her without a smile, his eyes wide and yellow, like a cat’s.

“What would happen?” she asked uncertainly.

“Scratch his eyes out,” the grocer said succinctly. “He wouldn’t ever be able to see another chicken.”

Mrs. Walpole realized that she felt faint. Smiling over her shoulder, in order not to seem discourteous, she moved quickly away from the meat counter and down to the other end of the store. The grocer continued talking to the man behind the meat counter and after a minute Mrs. Walpole went outside, into the air. She decided that she would go home and lie down until nearly lunchtime, and do her shopping later in the day.

At home she found that she could not lie down until the breakfast table was cleared and the dishes washed, and by the time she had done that it was almost time to start lunch. She was standing by the pantry shelves, debating, when a dark shape crossed the sunlight in the doorway and she realized that Lady was home. For a minute she stood still, watching Lady. The dog came in quietly, harmlessly, as though she had spent the morning frolicking on the grass with her friends, but there were spots of blood on her legs and she drank her water eagerly. Mrs. Walpole’s first impulse was to scold her, to hold her down and beat her for the deliberate, malicious pain she had inflicted, the murderous brutality a pretty dog like Lady could keep so well hidden in their home; then Mrs. Walpole, watching Lady go quietly and settle down in her usual spot by the stove, turned helplessly and took the first cans she found from the pantry shelves and brought them to the kitchen table.

Lady sat quietly by the stove until the children came in noisily for lunch, and then she leaped up and jumped on them, welcoming them as though they were the aliens and she the native to the house. Judy, pulling Lady’s ears, said, “Hello, Mom, do you know what Lady did? You’re a bad bad dog,” she said to Lady, “you’re going to get shot.”

Mrs. Walpole felt faint again and set a dish down hastily on the table. “Judy Walpole,” she said.

“She is, Mom,” Judy said. “She’s going to get shot.”

Children don’t realize, Mrs. Walpole told herself, death is never real to them. Try to be sensible, she told herself. “Sit down to lunch, children,” she said quietly.

“But, Mother,” Judy said, and Jack said, “She is, Mom.”

They sat down noisily, unfolding their napkins and attacking their food without looking at it, eager to talk.

“You know what Mr. Shepherd said, Mom?” Jack demanded, his mouth full.

“Listen,” Judy said, “we’ll tell you what he said.”

Mr. Shepherd was a genial man who lived near the Walpoles and gave the children nickels and took the boys fishing. “He says Lady’s going to get shot,” Jack said.

“But the spikes,” Judy said. “Tell about the spikes.”

“The spikes,” Jack said. “Listen, Mommy. He says you got to get a collar for Lady….”

“A strong collar,” Judy said.

“And you get big thick nails, like spikes, and you hammer them into the collar.”

“All around,” Judy said. “Let me tell it, Jack. You hammer these nails all around so’s they make spikes inside the collar.”

“But it’s loose,” Jack said. “Let me tell this part. It’s loose and you put it around Lady’s neck….”

“And—” Judy put her hand on her throat and made a strangling noise.

“Not yet,” Jack said. “Not yet, dopey. First you get a long long long long rope.”

“A real long rope,” Judy amplified.

“And you fasten it to the collar and then we put the collar on Lady,” Jack said. Lady was sitting next to him and he leaned over and said, “Then we put this real sharp spiky collar around your neck,” and kissed the top of her head while Lady regarded him affectionately.

“And then we take her where there are chickens,” Judy said, “and we show her the chickens, and we turn her loose.”

“And make her chase the chickens,” Jack said. “And then, and then, when she gets right up close to the chickens, we puuuuuuull on the rope—”

“And—” Judy made her strangling noise again.

“The spikes cut her head off,” Jack finished dramatically.

They both began to laugh and Lady, looking from one to the other, panted as though she were laughing too.

Mrs. Walpole looked at them, at her two children with their hard hands and their sunburned faces laughing together, their dog with blood still on her legs laughing with them. She went to the kitchen doorway to look outside at the cool green hills, the motion of the apple tree in the soft afternoon breeze.

“Cut your head right off,” Jack was saying.

Everything was quiet and lovely in the sunlight, the peaceful sky, the gentle line of the hills. Mrs. Walpole closed her eyes, suddenly feeling the harsh hands pulling her down, the sharp points closing in on her throat.

After You, My Dear Alphonse

MRS. WILSON was just taking the gingerbread out of the oven when she heard Johnny outside talking to someone.

“Johnny,” she called, “you’re late. Come in and get your lunch.”

“Just a minute, Mother,” Johnny said. “After you, my dear Alphonse.”

“After you, my dear Alphonse,” another voice said.

“No, after you, my dear Alphonse,” Johnny said.

Mrs. Wilson opened the door. “Johnny,” she said, “you come in this minute and get your lunch. You can play after you’ve eaten.”

Johnny came in after her, slowly. “Mother,” he said, “I brought Boyd home for lunch with me.”

“Boyd?” Mrs. Wilson thought for a moment. “I don’t believe I’ve met Boyd. Bring him in, dear, since you’ve invited him. Lunch is ready.”

“Boyd!” Johnny yelled. “Hey, Boyd, come on in!”

“I’m coming. Just got to unload this stuff.”

“Well, hurry, or my mother’ll be sore.”

“Johnny, that’s not very polite to either your friend or your mother,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Come sit down, Boyd.”

As she turned to show Boyd where to sit, she saw he was a Negro boy, smaller than Johnny but about the same age. His arms were loaded with split kindling wood. “Where’ll I put this stuff, Johnny?” he asked.

Mrs. Wilson turned to Johnny. “Johnny,” she said, “what did you make Boyd do? What is that wood?”

“Dead Japanese,” Johnny said mildly. “We stand them in the ground and run over them with tanks.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Wilson?” Boyd said.

“How do you do, Boyd? You shouldn’t let Johnny make you carry all that wood. Sit down now and eat lunch, both of you.”

“Why shouldn’t he carry the wood, Mother? It’s his wood. We got it at his place.”

“Johnny,” Mrs. Wilson said, “go on and eat your lunch.”

“Sure,” Johnny said. He held out the dish of scrambled eggs to Boyd. “After you, my dear Alphonse.”

“After you, my dear Alphonse,” Boyd said.

“After you, my dear Alphonse,” Johnny said. They began to giggle.

“Are you hungry, Boyd?” Mrs. Wilson asked.

“Yes, Mrs. Wilson.”

“Well, don’t you let Johnny stop you. He always fusses about eating, so you just see that you get a good lunch. There’s plenty of food here for you to have all you want.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Wilson.”

“Come on, Alphonse,” Johnny said. He pushed half the scrambled eggs on to Boyd’s plate. Boyd watched while Mrs. Wilson put a dish of stewed tomatoes beside his plate.

“Boyd don’t eat tomatoes, do you, Boyd?” Johnny said.

“Doesn’t eat tomatoes, Johnny. And just because you don’t like them, don’t say that about Boyd. Boyd will eat anything.”

“Bet he won’t,” Johnny said, attacking his scrambled eggs.

“Boyd wants to grow up and be a big strong man so he can work hard,” Mrs. Wilson said. “I’ll bet Boyd’s father eats stewed tomatoes.”

“My father eats anything he wants to,” Boyd said.

“So does mine,” Johnny said. “Sometimes he doesn’t eat hardly anything. He’s a little guy, though. Wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

“Mine’s a little guy, too,” Boyd said.

“I’ll bet he’s strong, though,” Mrs. Wilson said. She hesitated. “Does he…work?”

“Sure,” Johnny said. “Boyd’s father works in a factory.”

“There, you see?” Mrs. Wilson said. “And he certainly has to be strong to do that—all that lifting and carrying at a factory.”

“Boyd’s father doesn’t have to,” Johnny said. “He’s a foreman.”

Mrs. Wilson felt defeated. “What does your mother do, Boyd?”

“My mother?” Boyd was surprised. “She takes care of us kids.”

“Oh. She doesn’t work, then?”

“Why should she?” Johnny said through a mouthful of eggs. “You don’t work.”

“You really don’t want any stewed tomatoes, Boyd?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Wilson,” Boyd said.

“No, thank you, Mrs. Wilson, no, thank you, Mrs. Wilson, no, thank you, Mrs. Wilson,” Johnny said. “Boyd’s sister’s going to work, though. She’s going to be a teacher.”

“That’s a very fine attitude for her to have, Boyd.” Mrs. Wilson restrained an impulse to pat Boyd on the head. “I imagine you’re all very proud of her?”

“I guess so,” Boyd said.

“What about all your other brothers and sisters? I guess all of you want to make just as much of yourselves as you can.”

“There’s only me and Jean,” Boyd said. “I don’t know yet what I want to be when I grow up.”

“We’re going to be tank drivers, Boyd and me,” Johnny said. “Zoom.” Mrs. Wilson caught Boyd’s glass of milk as Johnny’s napkin ring, suddenly transformed into a tank, plowed heavily across the table.

“Look, Johnny,” Boyd said. “Here’s a foxhole. I’m shooting at you.”

Mrs. Wilson, with the speed born of long experience, took the gingerbread off the shelf and placed it carefully between the tank and the foxhole.

“Now eat as much as you want to, Boyd,” she said. “I want to see you get filled up.”

“Boyd eats a lot, but not as much as I do,” Johnny said. “I’m bigger than he is.”

“You’re not much bigger,” Boyd said. “I can beat you running.”

Mrs. Wilson took a deep breath. “Boyd,” she said. Both boys turned to her. “Boyd, Johnny has some suits that are a little too small for him, and a winter coat. It’s not new, of course, but there’s lots of wear in it still. And I have a few dresses that your mother or sister could probably use. Your mother can make them over into lots of things for all of you, and I’d be very happy to give them to you. Suppose before you leave I make up a big bundle and then you and Johnny can take it over to your mother right away…” Her voice trailed off as she saw Boyd’s puzzled expression.

“But I have plenty of clothes, thank you,” he said. “And I don’t think my mother knows how to sew very well, and anyway I guess we buy about everything we need. Thank you very much, though.”

“We don’t have time to carry that old stuff around, Mother,” Johnny said. “We got to play tanks with the kids today.”

Mrs. Wilson lifted the plate of gingerbread off the table as Boyd was about to take another piece. “There are many little boys like you, Boyd, who would be very grateful for the clothes someone was kind enough to give them.”

“Boyd will take them if you want him to, Mother,” Johnny said.

“I didn’t mean to make you mad, Mrs. Wilson,” Boyd said.

“Don’t think I’m angry, Boyd. I’m just disappointed in you, that’s all. Now let’s not say anything more about it.”

She began clearing the plates off the table, and Johnny took Boyd’s hand and pulled him to the door. “’Bye, Mother,” Johnny said. Boyd stood for a minute, staring at Mrs. Wilson’s back.

“After you, my dear Alphonse,” Johnny said, holding the door open.

“Is your mother still mad?” Mrs. Wilson heard Boyd ask in a low voice.

“I don’t know,” Johnny said. “She’s screwy sometimes.”

“So’s mine,” Boyd said. He hesitated. “After you, my dear Alphonse.”

Charles

THE DAY MY SON LAURIE started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing blue jeans with a belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a long-trousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me.

He came home the same way, the front door slamming open, his cap on the floor, and the voice suddenly become raucous shouting, “Isn’t anybody here?”

At lunch he spoke insolently to his father, spilled his baby sister’s milk, and remarked that his teacher said we were not to take the name of the Lord in vain.

“How was school today?” I asked, elaborately casual.

“All right,” he said.

“Did you learn anything?” his father asked.

Laurie regarded his father coldly. “I didn’t learn nothing,” he said.

“Anything,” I said. “Didn’t learn anything.”

“The teacher spanked a boy, though,” Laurie said, addressing his bread and butter. “For being fresh,” he added, with his mouth full.

“What did he do?” I asked. “Who was it?”

Laurie thought. “It was Charles,” he said. “He was fresh. The teacher spanked him and made him stand in a corner. He was awfully fresh.”

“What did he do?” I asked again, but Laurie slid off his chair, took a cookie, and left, while his father was still saying, “See here, young man.”

The next day Laurie remarked at lunch, as soon as he sat down, “Well, Charles was bad again today.” He grinned enormously and said, “Today Charles hit the teacher.”

“Good heavens,” I said, mindful of the Lord’s name, “I suppose he got spanked again?”

“He sure did,” Laurie said. “Look up,” he said to his father.

“What?” his father said, looking up.

“Look down,” Laurie said. “Look at my thumb. Gee, you’re dumb.” He began to laugh insanely.

“Why did Charles hit the teacher?” I asked quickly.

“Because she tried to make him color with red crayons,” Laurie said. “Charles wanted to color with green crayons so he hit the teacher and she spanked him and said nobody play with Charles but everybody did.”

The third day—it was Wednesday of the first week—Charles bounced a see-saw on to the head of a little girl and made her bleed, and the teacher made him stay inside all during recess. Thursday Charles had to stand in a corner during story-time because he kept pounding his feet on the floor. Friday Charles was deprived of blackboard privileges because he threw chalk.

On Saturday I remarked to my husband, “Do you think kindergarten is too unsettling for Laurie? All this toughness, and bad grammar, and this Charles boy sounds like such a bad influence.”

“It’ll be all right,” my husband said reassuringly. “Bound to be people like Charles in the world. Might as well meet them now as later.”

On Monday Laurie came home late, full of news. “Charles,” he shouted as he came up the hill; I was waiting anxiously on the front steps. “Charles,” Laurie yelled all the way up the hill, “Charles was bad again.”

“Come right in,” I said, as soon as he came close enough. “Lunch is waiting.”

“You know what Charles did?” he demanded, following me through the door. “Charles yelled so in school they sent a boy in from first grade to tell the teacher she had to make Charles keep quiet, and so Charles had to stay after school. And so all the children stayed to watch him.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“He just sat there,” Laurie said, climbing into his chair at the table. “Hi, Pop, y’old dust mop.”

“Charles had to stay after school today,” I told my husband. “Everyone stayed with him.”

“What does this Charles look like?” my husband asked Laurie. “What’s his other name?”

“He’s bigger than me,” Laurie said. “And he doesn’t have any rubbers and he doesn’t ever wear a jacket.”

Monday night was the first Parent-Teachers meeting, and only the fact that the baby had a cold kept me from going; I wanted passionately to meet Charles’s mother. On Tuesday Laurie remarked suddenly, “Our teacher had a friend come to see her in school today.”

“Charles’s mother?” my husband and I asked simultaneously.

“Naaah,” Laurie said scornfully. “It was a man who came and made us do exercises, we had to touch our toes. Look.” He climbed down from his chair and squatted down and touched his toes. “Like this,” he said. He got solemnly back into his chair and said, picking up his fork, “Charles didn’t even do exercises.”

“That’s fine,” I said heartily. “Didn’t Charles want to do exercises?”

“Naaah,” Laurie said. “Charles was so fresh to the teacher’s friend he wasn’t let do exercises.”

“Fresh again?” I said.

“He kicked the teacher’s friend,” Laurie said. “The teacher’s friend told Charles to touch his toes like I just did and Charles kicked him.”

“What are they going to do about Charles, do you suppose?” Laurie’s father asked him.

Laurie shrugged elaborately. “Throw him out of school, I guess,” he said.

Wednesday and Thursday were routine; Charles yelled during story hour and hit a boy in the stomach and made him cry. On Friday Charles stayed after school again and so did all the other children.

With the third week of kindergarten Charles was an institution in our family; the baby was being a Charles when she cried all afternoon; Laurie did a Charles when he filled his wagon full of mud and pulled it through the kitchen; even my husband, when he caught his elbow in the telephone cord and pulled telephone, ashtray, and a bowl of flowers off the table, said, after the first minute, “Looks like Charles.”

During the third and fourth weeks it looked like a reformation in Charles; Laurie reported grimly at lunch on Thursday of the third week, “Charles was so good today the teacher gave him an apple.”

“What?” I said, and my husband added warily, “You mean Charles?”

“Charles,” Laurie said. “He gave the crayons around and he picked up the books afterward and the teacher said he was her helper.”

“What happened?” I asked incredulously.

“He was her helper, that’s all,” Laurie said, and shrugged.

“Can this be true, about Charles?” I asked my husband that night. “Can something like this happen?”

“Wait and see,” my husband said cynically. “When you’ve got a Charles to deal with, this may mean he’s only plotting.”

He seemed to be wrong. For over a week Charles was the teacher’s helper; each day he handed things out and he picked things up; no one had to stay after school.

“The P.T.A. meeting’s next week again,” I told my husband one evening. “I’m going to find Charles’s mother there.”

“Ask her what happened to Charles,” my husband said. “I’d like to know.”

“I’d like to know myself,” I said.

On Friday of that week things were back to normal. “You know what Charles did today?” Laurie demanded at the lunch table, in a voice slightly awed. “He told a little girl to say a word and she said it and the teacher washed her mouth out with soap and Charles laughed.”

“What word?” his father asked unwisely, and Laurie said, “I’ll have to whisper it to you, it’s so bad.” He got down off his chair and went around to his father. His father bent his head down and Laurie whispered joyfully. His father’s eyes widened.

“Did Charles tell the little girl to say that?” he asked respectfully.

“She said it twice,” Laurie said. “Charles told her to say it twice.”

“What happened to Charles?” my husband asked.

“Nothing,” Laurie said. “He was passing out the crayons.”

Monday morning Charles abandoned the little girl and said the evil word himself three or four times, getting his mouth washed out with soap each time. He also threw chalk.

My husband came to the door with me that evening as I set out for the P.T.A. meeting. “Invite her over for a cup of tea after the meeting,” he said. “I want to get a look at her.”

“If only she’s there,” I said prayerfully.

“Shell be there,” my husband said. “I don’t see how they could hold a P.T.A. meeting without Charles’s mother.”

At the meeting I sat restlessly, scanning each comfortable matronly face, trying to determine which one hid the secret of Charles. None of them looked to me haggard enough. No one stood up in the meeting and apologized for the way her son had been acting. No one mentioned Charles.

After the meeting I identified and sought out Laurie’s kindergarten teacher. She had a plate with a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake; I had a plate with a cup of tea and a piece of marshmallow cake. We maneuvered up to one another cautiously, and smiled.

“I’ve been so anxious to meet you,” I said. “I’m Laurie’s mother.”

“We’re all so interested in Laurie,” she said.

“Well, he certainly likes kindergarten,” I said. “He talks about it all the time.”

“We had a little trouble adjusting, the first week or so,” she said primly, “but now he’s a fine little helper. With occasional lapses, of course.”

“Laurie usually adjusts very quickly,” I said. “I suppose this time it’s Charles’s influence.”

“Charles?”

“Yes,” I said, laughing, “you must have your hands full in that kindergarten, with Charles.”

“Charles?” she said. “We don’t have any Charles in the kindergarten.”

Afternoon in Linen

IT WAS a long, cool room, comfortably furnished and happily placed, with hydrangea bushes outside the large windows and their pleasant shadows on the floor. Everyone in it was wearing linen—the little girl in the pink linen dress with a wide blue belt, Mrs. Kator in a brown linen suit and a big, yellow linen hat, Mrs. Lennon, who was the little girl’s grandmother, in a white linen dress, and Mrs. Kator’s little boy, Howard, in a blue linen shirt and shorts. Like in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, the little girl thought, looking at her grandmother; like the gentleman all dressed in white paper. I’m a gentleman all dressed in pink paper, she thought. Although Mrs. Lennon and Mrs. Kator lived on the same block and saw each other every day, this was a formal call, and so they were drinking tea.

Howard was sitting at the piano at one end of the long room, in front of the biggest window. He was playing “Humoresque” in careful, unhurried tempo. I played that last year, the little girl thought; it’s in G. Mrs. Lennon and Mrs. Kator were still holding their teacups, listening to Howard and looking at him, and now and then looking at each other and smiling. I could still play that if I wanted to, the little girl thought.

When Howard had finished playing “Humoresque,” he slid off the piano bench and came over and gravely sat down beside the little girl, waiting for his mother to tell him whether to play again or not. He’s bigger than I am, she thought, but I’m older. I’m ten. If they ask me to play the piano for them now, I’ll say no.

“I think you play very nicely, Howard,” the little girl’s grandmother said. There were a few moments of leaden silence. Then Mrs. Kator said, “Howard, Mrs. Lennon spoke to you.” Howard murmured and looked at his hands on his knees.

“I think he’s coming along very well,” Mrs. Kator said to Mrs. Lennon. “He doesn’t like to practise, but I think he’s coming along well.”

“Harriet loves to practise,” the little girl’s grandmother said. “She sits at the piano for hours, making up little tunes and singing.”

“She probably has a real talent for music,” Mrs. Kator said. “I often wonder whether Howard is getting as much out of his music as he should.”

“Harriet,” Mrs. Lennon said to the little girl, “won’t you play for Mrs. Kator? Play one of your own little tunes.”

“I don’t know any,” the little girl said.

“Of course you do, dear,” her grandmother said.

“I’d like very much to hear a little tune you made up yourself, Harriet,” Mrs. Kator said.

“I don’t know any,” the little girl said.

Mrs. Lennon looked at Mrs. Kator and shrugged. Mrs. Kator nodded, mouthing “Shy,” and turned to look proudly at Howard.

The little girl’s grandmother set her lips firmly in a tight, sweet smile. “Harriet dear,” she said, “even if we don’t want to play our little tunes, I think we ought to tell Mrs. Kator that music is not our forte. I think we ought to show her our really fine achievements in another line. Harriet,” she continued, turning to Mrs. Kator, “has written some poems. I’m going to ask her to recite them to you, because I feel, even though I may be prejudiced”—she laughed modestly—“even though I probably am prejudiced, that they show real merit.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake!” Mrs. Kator said. She looked at Harriet, pleased. “Why, dear, I didn’t know you could do anything like that! I’d really love to hear them.”

“Recite one of your poems for Mrs. Kator, Harriet.”

The little girl looked at her grandmother, at the sweet smile, and at Mrs. Kator, leaning forward, and at Howard, sitting with his mouth open and a great delight growing in his eyes. “Don’t know any,” she said.

“Harriet,” her grandmother said, “even if you don’t remember any of your poems, you have some written down. I’m sure Mrs. Kator won’t mind if you read them to her.”

The huge merriment that had been gradually taking hold of Howard suddenly overwhelmed him. “Poems,” he said, doubling up with laughter on the couch. “Harriet writes poems.” He’ll tell all the kids on the block, the little girl thought.

“I do believe Howard’s jealous,” Mrs. Kator said.

“Aw,” Howard said. “I wouldn’t write a poem. Bet you couldn’t make me write a poem if you tried.”

“You couldn’t make me, either,” the little girl said. “That’s all a lie about the poems.”

There was a long silence. Then “Why, Harriet!” the little girl’s grandmother said in a sad voice. “What a thing to say about your grandmother!” Mrs. Kator said. “I think you’d better apologize, Harriet,” the little girl’s grandmother said. Mrs. Kator said, “Why, you certainly had better.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the little girl muttered. “I’m sorry.”

The grandmother’s voice was stern. “Now bring your poems out and read them to Mrs. Kator.”

“I don’t have any, honestly, Grandma,” the little girl said desperately. “Honestly, I don’t have any of those poems.”

“Well, J have,” the grandmother said. “Bring them to me from the top desk drawer.”

The little girl hesitated for a minute, watching her grandmother’s straight mouth and frowning eyes.

“Howard will get them for you, Mrs. Lennon,” Mrs. Kator said.

“Sure,” Howard said. He jumped up and ran over to the desk, pulling open the drawer. “What do they look like?” he shouted.

“In an envelope,” the grandmother said tightly. “In a brown envelope with ‘Harriet’s poetry’ written on the front.”

“Here it is,” Howard said. He pulled some papers out of the envelope and studied them a moment. “Look,” he said. “Harriet’s poems—about stars.” He ran to his mother, giggling and holding out the papers. “Look, Mother, Harriet’s poetry’s about stars!”

“Give them to Mrs. Lennon, dear,” Howard’s mother said. “It was very rude to open the envelope first.”

Mrs. Lennon took the envelope and the papers and held them out to Harriet. “Will you read them or shall I?” she asked kindly. Harriet shook her head. The grandmother sighed at Mrs. Kator and took up the first sheet of paper. Mrs. Kator leaned forward eagerly and Howard settled down at her feet, hugging his knees and putting his face against his leg to keep from laughing. The grandmother cleared her throat, smiled at Harriet, and began to read.

“‘The Evening Star,’” she announced.

Howard could contain himself no longer. “Harriet writes poems about stars!”

“Why, it’s lovely, Harriet dear!” Mrs. Kator said. “I think it’s really lovely, honestly. I don’t see what you’re so shy about it for.”

“There, you see, Harriet?” Mrs. Lennon said. “Mrs. Kator thinks your poetry is very nice. Now aren’t you sorry you made such a fuss about such a little thing?”

He’ll tell all the kids on the block, Harriet thought. “I didn’t write it,” she said.

“Why, Harriet!” Her grandmother laughed. “You don’t need to be so modest, child. You write very nice poems.”

“I copied it out of a book,” Harriet said. “I found it in a book and I copied it and gave it to my old grandmother and said I wrote it.”

“I don’t believe you’d do anything like that, Harriet,” Mrs. Kator said, puzzled.

“I did so,” Harriet maintained stubbornly. “I copied it right out of a book.”

“Harriet, I don’t believe you,” her grandmother said.

Harriet looked at Howard, who was staring at her in admiration. “I copied it out of a book,” she said to him. “I found the book in the library one day.”

“I can’t imagine her saying she did such a thing,” Mrs. Lennon said to Mrs. Kator. Mrs. Kator shook her head.

“It was a book called”—Harriet thought a moment—“called The Home Book of Verse,” she said. “That’s what it was. And I copied every single word. I didn’t make up one.”

“Harriet, is this true?” her grandmother said. She turned to Mrs. Kator. “I’m afraid I must apologize for Harriet and for reading you the poem under false pretenses. I never dreamed she’d deceive me.”

“Oh, they do,” Mrs. Kator said deprecatingly. “They want attention and praise and sometimes they’ll do almost anything. I’m sure Harriet didn’t mean to be—well, dishonest.”

“I did so,” Harriet said. “I wanted everyone to think I wrote it. I said I wrote it on purpose.” She went over and took the papers out of her grandmother’s unresisting hand. “And you can’t look at them any more, either,” she said, and held them in back of her, away from everyone.

Flower Garden

AFTER LIVING in an old Vermont manor house together for almost eleven years, the two Mrs. Winnings, mother and daughter-in-law, had grown to look a good deal alike, as women will who live intimately together, and work in the same kitchen and get things done around the house in the same manner. Although young Mrs. Winning had been a Talbot, and had dark hair which she wore cut short, she was now officially a Winning, a member of the oldest family in town and her hair was beginning to grey where her mother-in-law’s hair had greyed first, at the temples; they both had thin sharp-featured faces and eloquent hands, and sometimes when they were washing dishes or shelling peas or polishing silverware together, their hands, moving so quickly and similarly, communicated more easily and sympathetically than their minds ever could. Young Mrs. Winning thought sometimes, when she sat at the breakfast table next to her mother-in-law, with her baby girl in the high-chair close by, that they must resemble some stylized block print for a New England wallpaper; mother, daughter, and granddaughter, with perhaps Plymouth Rock or Concord Bridge in the background.

On this, as on other cold mornings, they lingered over their coffee, unwilling to leave the big kitchen with the coal stove and the pleasant atmosphere of food and cleanliness, and they sat together silently sometimes until the baby had long finished her breakfast and was playing quietly in the special baby corner, where uncounted Winning children had played with almost identical toys from the same heavy wooden box.

“It seems as though spring would never come,” young Mrs. Winning said. “I get so tired of the cold.”

“Got to be cold some of the time,” her mother-in-law said. She began to move suddenly and quickly, stacking plates, indicating that the time for sitting was over and the time for working had begun. Young Mrs. Winning, rising immediately to help, thought for the thousandth time that her mother-in-law would never relinquish the position of authority in her own house until she was too old to move before anyone else.

“And I wish someone would move into the old cottage,” young Mrs. Winning added. She stopped halfway to the pantry with the table napkins and said longingly, “If only someone would move in before spring.” Young Mrs. Winning had wanted, long ago, to buy the cottage herself, for her husband to make with his own hands into a home where they could live with their children, but now, accustomed as she was to the big old house at the top of the hill where her husband’s family had lived for generations, she had only a great kindness left toward the little cottage, and a wistful anxiety to see some happy young people living there. When she heard it was sold, as all the old houses were being sold in these days when no one could seem to find a newer place to live, she had allowed herself to watch daily for a sign that someone new was coming; every morning she glanced down from the back porch to see if there was smoke coming out of the cottage chimney, and every day going down the hill on her way to the store she hesitated past the cottage, watching carefully for the least movement within. The cottage had been sold in January and now, nearly two months later, even though it seemed prettier and less worn with the snow gently covering the overgrown garden and icicles in front of the blank windows, it was still forlorn and empty, despised since the day long ago when Mrs. Winning had given up all hope of ever living there.

Mrs. Winning deposited the napkins in the pantry and turned to tear the leaf off the kitchen calendar before selecting a dish towel and joining her mother-in-law at the sink. “March already,” she said despondently.

“They did tell me down at the store yesterday,” her mother-in-law said, “that they were going to start painting the cottage this week.”

“Then that must mean someone’s coming!”

“Can’t take more than a couple of weeks to paint inside that little house,” old Mrs. Winning said.

It was almost April, however, before the new people moved in. The snow had almost melted and was running down the street in icy, half-solid rivers. The ground was slushy and miserable to walk on, the skies grey and dull. In another month the first amazing green would start in the trees and on the ground, but for the better part of April there would be cold rain and perhaps more snow. The cottage had been painted inside, and new paper put on the walls. The front steps had been repaired and new glass put into the broken windows. In spite of the grey sky and the patches of dirty snow the cottage looked neater and firmer, and the painters were coming back to do the outside when the weather cleared. Mrs. Winning, standing at the foot of the cottage walk, tried to picture the cottage as it stood now, against the picture of the cottage she had made years ago, when she had hoped to live there herself. She had wanted roses by the porch; that could be done, and the neat colorful garden she had planned. She would have painted the outside white, and that too might still be done. Since the cottage had been sold she had not gone inside, but she remembered the little rooms, with the windows over the garden that could be so bright with gay curtains and window boxes, the small kitchen she would have painted yellow, the two bedrooms upstairs with slanting ceilings under the eaves. Mrs. Winning looked at the cottage for a long time, standing on the wet walk, and then went slowly on down to the store.

The first news she had of the new people came, at last, from the grocer a few days later. As he was tieing the string around the three pounds of hamburger the large Winning family would consume in one meal, he asked cheerfully, “Seen your new neighbors yet?”

“Have they moved in?” Mrs. Winning asked. “The people in the cottage?”

“Lady in here this morning,” the grocer said. “Lady and a little boy, seem like nice people. They say her husband’s dead. Nice-looking lady.”

Mrs. Winning had been born in the town and the grocer’s father had given her jawbreakers and licorice in the grocery store while the present grocer was still in high school. For a while, when she was twelve and the grocer’s son was twenty, Mrs. Winning had hoped secretly that he would want to marry her. He was fleshy now, and middle-aged, and although he still called her Helen and she still called him Tom, she belonged now to the Winning family and had to speak critically to him, no matter how unwillingly, if the meat were tough or the butter price too high. She knew that when he spoke of the new neighbor as a “lady” he meant something different than if he had spoken of her as a “woman” or a “person.” Mrs. Winning knew that he spoke of the two Mrs. Winnings to his other customers as “ladies.” She hesitated and then asked, “Have they really moved in to stay?”

“She’ll have to stay for a while,” the grocer said drily. “Bought a week’s worth of groceries.”

Going back up the hill with her package Mrs. Winning watched all the way to detect some sign of the new people in the cottage. When she reached the cottage walk she slowed down and tried to watch not too obviously. There was no smoke coming from the chimney, and no sign of furniture near the house, as there might have been if people were still moving in, but there was a middle-aged car parked in the street before the cottage and Mrs. Winning thought she could see figures moving past the windows. On a sudden irresistible impulse she turned and went up the walk to the front porch, and then, after debating for a moment, on up the steps to the door. She knocked, holding her bag of groceries in one arm, and then the door opened and she looked down on a little boy, about the same age, she thought happily, as her own son.

“Hello,” Mrs. Winning said.

“Hello,” the boy said. He regarded her soberly.

“Is your mother here?” Mrs. Winning asked. “I came to see if I could help her move in.”

“We’re all moved in,” the boy said. He was about to close the door, but a woman’s voice said from somewhere in the house, “Davey? Are you talking to someone?”

“That’s my mommy,” the little boy said. The woman came up behind him and opened the door a little wider. “Yes?” she said.

Mrs. Winning said, “I’m Helen Winning. I live about three houses up the street, and I thought perhaps I might be able to help you.”

“Thank you,” the woman said doubtfully. She’s younger than I am, Mrs. Winning thought, she’s about thirty. And pretty. For a clear minute Mrs. Winning saw why the grocer had called her a lady.

“It’s so nice to have someone living in this house,” Mrs. Winning said shyly. Past the other woman’s head she could see the small hallway, with the larger living-room beyond and the door on the left going into the kitchen, the stairs on the right, with the delicate stair-rail newly painted; they had done the hall in light green, and Mrs. Winning smiled with friendship at the woman in the doorway, thinking, She has done it right; this is the way it should look after all, she knows about pretty houses.

After a minute the other woman smiled back, and said, “Will you come in?”

As she stepped back to let Mrs. Winning in, Mrs. Winning wondered with a suddenly stricken conscience if perhaps she had not been too forward, almost pushing herself in…. “I hope I’m not making a nuisance of myself,” she said unexpectedly, turning to the other woman. “It’s just that I’ve been wanting to live here myself for so long.” Why did I say that, she wondered; it had been a very long time since young Mrs. Winning had said the first thing that came into her head.

“Come see my room,” the little boy said urgently, and Mrs. Winning smiled down at him.

“I have a little boy just about your age,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Davey,” the little boy said, moving closer to his mother. “Davey William MacLane.”

“My little boy,” Mrs. Winning said soberly, “is named Howard Talbot Winning.”

The little boy looked up at his mother uncertainly, and Mrs. Winning, who felt ill at ease and awkward in this little house she so longed for, said, “How old are you? My little boy is five.”

“I’m five,” the little boy said, as though realizing it for the first time. He looked again at his mother and she said graciously, “Will you come in and see what we’ve done to the house?”

Mrs. Winning put her bag of groceries down on the slim-legged table in the green hall, and followed Mrs. MacLane into the living-room, which was L-shaped and had the windows Mrs. Winning would have fitted with gay curtains and flower-boxes. As she stepped into the room Mrs. Winning realized, with a quick wonderful relief, that it was really going to be all right, after all. Everything, from the andirons in the fireplace to the books on the table, was exactly as Mrs. Winning might have done if she were eleven years younger; a little more informal, perhaps, nothing of quite such good quality as young Mrs. Winning might have chosen, but still richly, undeniably right. There was a picture of Davey on the mantel, flanked by a picture which Mrs. Winning supposed was Davey’s father; there was a glorious blue bowl on the low coffee table, and around the corner of the L stood a row of orange plates on a shelf, and a polished maple table and chairs.

“It’s lovely,” Mrs. Winning said. This could have been mine, she was thinking, and she stood in the doorway and said again, “It’s perfectly lovely.”

Mrs. MacLane crossed over to the low armchair by the fireplace and picked up the soft blue material that lay across the arm. “I’m making curtains,” she said, and touched the blue bowl with the tip of one finger. “Somehow I always make my blue bowl the center of the room,” she said. “I’m having the curtains the same blue, and my rug—when it comes!—will have the same blue in the design.”

“It matches Davey’s eyes,” Mrs. Winning said, and when Mrs. MacLane smiled again she saw that it matched Mrs. MacLane’s eyes too. Helpless before so much that was magic to her, Mrs. Winning said “Have you painted the kitchen yellow?”

“Yes,” Mrs. MacLane said, surprised. “Come and see.” She led the way through the L, around past the orange plates to the kitchen, which caught the late morning sun and shone with clean paint and bright aluminum; Mrs. Winning noticed the electric coffeepot, the waffle iron, the toaster, and thought, she couldn’t have much trouble cooking, not with just the two of them.

“When I have a garden,” Mrs. MacLane said, “we’ll be able to see it from almost all the windows.” She gestured to the broad kitchen windows, and added, “I love gardens. I imagine I’ll spend most of my time working in this one, as soon as the weather is nice.”

“It’s a good house for a garden,” Mrs. Winning said. “I’ve heard that it used to be one of the prettiest gardens on the block.”

“I thought so too,” Mrs. MacLane said. “I’m going to have flowers on all four sides of the house. With a cottage like this you can, you know.”

Oh, I know, I know, Mrs. Winning thought wistfully, remembering the neat charming garden she could have had, instead of the row of nasturtiums along the side of the Winning house, which she tended so carefully; no flowers would grow well around the Winning house, because of the heavy old maple trees which shaded all the yard and which had been tall when the house was built.

Mrs. MacLane had had the bathroom upstairs done in yellow, too, and the two small bedrooms with overhanging eaves were painted green and rose. “All garden colors,” she told Mrs. Winning gaily, and Mrs. Winning, thinking of the oddly-matched, austere bedrooms in the big Winning house, sighed and admitted that it would be wonderful to have window seats under the eaved windows. Davey’s bedroom was the green one, and his small bed was close to the window. “This morning,” he told Mrs. Winning solemnly, “I looked out and there were four icicles hanging by my bed.”

Mrs. Winning stayed in the cottage longer than she should have; she felt certain, although Mrs. MacLane was pleasant and cordial, that her visit was extended past courtesy and into curiosity. Even so, it was only her sudden guilt about the three pounds of hamburger and dinner for the Winning men that drove her away. When she left, waving good-bye to Mrs. MacLane and Davey as they stood in the cottage doorway, she had invited Davey up to play with Howard, Mrs. MacLane up for tea, both of them to come for lunch some day, and all without the permission of her mother-in-law.

Reluctantly she came to the big house and turned past the bolted front door to go up the walk to the back door, which all the family used in the winter. Her mother-in-law looked up as she came into the kitchen and said irritably, “I called the store and Tom said you left an hour ago.”

“I stopped off at the old cottage,” Mrs. Winning said. She put the package of groceries down on the table and began to take things out quickly, to get the doughnuts on to a plate and the hamburger into the pan before too much time was lost. With her coat still on and her scarf over her head she moved as fast as she could while her mother-in-law, slicing bread at the kitchen table, watched her silently.

“Take your coat off,” her mother-in-law said finally. “Your husband will be home in a minute.”

By twelve o’clock the house was noisy and full of mud tracked across the kitchen floor. The oldest Howard, Mrs. Winning’s father-in-law, came in from the farm and went silently to hang his hat and coat in the dark hall before speaking to his wife and daughter-in-law; the younger Howard, Mrs. Winning’s husband, came in from the barn after putting the truck away and nodded to his wife and kissed his mother; and the youngest Howard, Mrs. Winning’s son, crashed into the kitchen, home from kindergarten, shouting, “Where’s dinner?”

The baby, anticipating food, banged on her high-chair with the silver cup which had first been used by the oldest Howard Winning’s mother. Mrs. Winning and her mother-in-law put plates down on the table swiftly, knowing after many years the exact pause between the latest arrival and the serving of food, and with a minimum of time three generations of the Winning family were eating silently and efficiently, all anxious to be back about their work: the farm, the mill, the electric train; the dishes, the sewing, the nap. Mrs. Winning, feeding the baby, trying to anticipate her mother-in-law’s gestures of serving, thought, today more poignantly than ever before, that she had at least given them another Howard, with the Winning eyes and mouth, in exchange for her food and her bed.

After dinner, after the men had gone back to work and the children were in bed, the baby for her nap and Howard resting with crayons and coloring book, Mrs. Winning sat down with her mother-in-law over their sewing and tried to describe the cottage.

“It’s just perfect,” she said helplessly. “Everything is so pretty. She invited us to come down some day and see it when it’s all finished, the curtains and everything.”

“I was talking to Mrs. Blake,” the elder Mrs. Winning said, as though in agreement. “She says the husband was killed in an automobile accident. She had some money in her own name and I guess she decided to settle down in the country for the boy’s health. Mrs. Blake said he looked peakish.”

“She loves gardens,” Mrs. Winning said, her needle still in her hand for a moment. “She’s going to have a big garden all around the house.”

“She’ll need help,” the elder woman said humorlessly, “that’s a mighty big garden she’ll have.”

“She has the most beautiful blue bowl, Mother Winning. You’d love it, it’s almost like silver.”

“Probably,” the elder Mrs. Winning said after a pause, “probably her people came from around here a ways back, and that’s why she’s settled in these parts.”

The next day Mrs. Winning walked slowly past the cottage, and slowly the next, and the day after, and the day after that. On the second day she saw Mrs. MacLane at the window, and waved, and on the third day she met Davey on the sidewalk. “When are you coming to visit my little boy?” she asked him, and he stared at her solemnly and said, “Tomorrow.”

Mrs. Burton, next-door to the MacLanes, ran over on the third day they were there with a fresh apple pie, and then told all the neighbors about the yellow kitchen and the bright electric utensils. Another neighbor, whose husband had helped Mrs. MacLane start her furnace, explained that Mrs. MacLane was only very recently widowed. One or another of the townspeople called on the MacLanes almost daily, and frequently, as young Mrs. Winning passed, she saw familiar faces at the windows, measuring the blue curtains with Mrs. MacLane, or she waved to acquaintances who stood chatting with Mrs. MacLane on the now firm front steps. After the MacLanes had been in the cottage for about a week Mrs. Winning met them one day in the grocery and they walked up the hill together, and talked about putting Davey into the kindergarten. Mrs. MacLane wanted to keep him home as long as possible, and Mrs. Winning asked her, “Don’t you feel terribly tied down, having him with you all the time?”

“I like it,” Mrs. MacLane said cheerfully, “we keep each other company,” and Mrs. Winning felt clumsy and ill-mannered, remembering Mrs. MacLane’s widowhood.

As the weather grew warmer and the first signs of green showed on the trees and on the wet ground, Mrs. Winning and Mrs. MacLane became better friends. They met almost daily at the grocery and walked up the hill together, and twice Davey came up to play with Howard’s electric train, and once Mrs. MacLane came up to get him and stayed for a cup of coffee in the great kitchen while the boys raced round and round the table and Mrs. Winning’s mother-in-law was visiting a neighbor.

“It’s such an old house,” Mrs. MacLane said, looking up at the dark ceiling. “I love old houses; they feel so secure and warm, as though lots of people had been perfectly satisfied with them and they knew how useful they were. You don’t get that feeling with a new house.”

“This dreary old place,” Mrs. Winning said. Mrs. MacLane, with a rose-colored sweater and her bright soft hair, was a spot of color in the kitchen that Mrs. Winning knew she could never duplicate. “I’d give anything in the world to live in your house,” Mrs. Winning said.

“I love it,” Mrs. MacLane said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy. Everyone around here is so nice, and the house is so pretty, and I planted a lot of bulbs yesterday.” She laughed. “I used to sit in that apartment in New York and dream about planting bulbs again.”

Mrs. Winning looked at the boys, thinking how Howard was half-a-head taller, and stronger, and how Davey was small and weak and loved his mother adoringly. “It’s been good for Davey already,” she said. “There’s color in his cheeks.”

“Davey loves it,” Mrs. MacLane agreed. Hearing his name Davey came over and put his head in her lap and she touched his hair, bright like her own. “We’d better be getting on home, Davey boy,” she said.

“Maybe our flowers have grown some since yesterday,” said Davey.

Gradually the days became miraculously long and warm, and Mrs. MacLane’s garden began to show colors and became an ordered thing, still very young and unsure, but promising rich brilliance for the end of the summer, and the next summer, and summers ten years from now.

“It’s even better than I hoped,” Mrs. MacLane said to Mrs. Winning, standing at the garden gate. “Things grow so much better here than almost anywhere else.”

Davey and Howard played daily after the school was out for the summer, and Howard was free all day. Sometimes Howard stayed at Davey’s house for lunch, and they planted a vegetable patch together in the MacLane back yard. Mrs. Winning stopped for Mrs. MacLane on her way to the store in the mornings and Davey and Howard frolicked ahead of them down the street. They picked up their mail together and read it walking back up the hill, and Mrs. Winning went more cheerfully back to the big Winning house after walking most of the way home with Mrs. MacLane.

One afternoon Mrs. Winning put the baby in Howard’s wagon and with the two boys they went for a long walk in the country. Mrs. MacLane picked Queen Anne’s lace and put it into the wagon with the baby, and the boys found a garter snake and tried to bring it home. On the way up the hill Mrs. MacLane helped pull the wagon with the baby and the Queen Anne’s lace, and they stopped halfway to rest and Mrs. MacLane said, “Look, I believe you can see my garden all the way from here.”

It was a spot of color almost at the top of the hill and they stood looking at it while the baby threw the Queen Anne’s lace out of the wagon. Mrs. MacLane said, “I always want to stop here to look at it,” and then, “Who is that beautiful child?”

Mrs. Winning looked, and then laughed. “He is attractive, isn’t he,” she said. “It’s Billy Jones.” She looked at him herself, carefully, trying to see him as Mrs. MacLane would. He was a boy about twelve, sitting quietly on a wall across the street, with his chin in his hands, silently watching Davey and Howard.

“He’s like a young statue,” Mrs. MacLane said. “So brown, and will you look at that face?” She started to walk again to see him more clearly, and Mrs. Winning followed her. “Do I know his mother and fath—?”

“The Jones children are half-Negro,” Mrs. Winning said hastily. “But they’re all beautiful children; you should see the girl. They live just outside town.”

Howard’s voice reached them clearly across the summer air. “Nigger,” he was saying, “nigger, nigger boy.”

“Nigger,” Davey repeated, giggling.

Mrs. MacLane gasped, and then said, “Davey,” in a voice that made Davey turn his head apprehensively; Mrs. Winning had never heard her friend use such a voice, and she too watched Mrs. MacLane.

“Davey,” Mrs. MacLane said again, and Davey approached slowly. “What did I hear you say?”

“Howard,” Mrs. Winning said, “leave Billy alone.”

“Go tell that boy you’re sorry,” Mrs. MacLane said. “Go at once and tell him you’re sorry.”

Davey blinked tearfully at his mother and then went to the curb and called across the street, “I’m sorry.”

Howard and Mrs. Winning waited uneasily, and Billy Jones across the street raised his head from his hands and looked at Davey and then, for a long time, at Mrs. MacLane. Then he put his chin on his hands again.

Suddenly Mrs. MacLane called, “Young man—Will you come here a minute, please?”

Mrs. Winning was surprised, and stared at Mrs. MacLane, but when the boy across the street did not move Mrs. Winning said sharply, “Billy! Billy Jones! Come here at once!”

The boy raised his head and looked at them, and then slid slowly down from the wall and started across the street. When he was across the street and about five feet from them he stopped, waiting.

“Hello,” Mrs. MacLane said gently, “what’s your name?”

The boy looked at her for a minute and then at Mrs. Winning, and Mrs. Winning said, “He’s Billy Jones. Answer when you’re spoken to, Billy.”

“Billy,” Mrs. MacLane said, “I’m sorry my little boy called you a name, but he’s very little and he doesn’t always know what he’s saying. But he’s sorry, too.”

“Okay,” Billy said, still watching Mrs. Winning. He was wearing an old pair of blue jeans and a torn white shirt, and he was barefoot. His skin and hair were the same color, the golden shade of a very heavy tan, and his hair curled lightly; he had the look of a garden statue.

“Billy,” Mrs. MacLane said, “how would you like to come and work for me? Earn some money?”

“Sure,” Billy said.

“Do you like gardening?” Mrs. MacLane asked. Billy nodded soberly. “Because,” Mrs. MacLane went on enthusiastically, “I’ve been needing someone to help me with my garden, and it would be just the thing for you to do.” She waited a minute and then said, “Do you know where I live?”

“Sure,” Billy said. He turned his eyes away from Mrs. Winning and for a minute looked at Mrs. MacLane, his brown eyes expressionless. Then he looked back at Mrs. Winning, who was watching Howard up the street.

“Fine,” Mrs. MacLane said. “Will you come tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Billy said. He waited for a minute, looking from Mrs. MacLane to Mrs. Winning, and then ran back across the street and vaulted over the wall where he had been sitting. Mrs. MacLane watched him admiringly. Then she smiled at Mrs. Winning and gave the wagon a tug to start it up the hill again. They were nearly at the MacLane cottage before Mrs. MacLane finally spoke. “I just can’t stand that,” she said, “to hear children attacking people for things they can’t help.”

“They’re strange people, the Joneses,” Mrs. Winning said readily. “The father works around as a handyman; maybe you’ve seen him. You see—” she dropped her voice—“the mother was white, a girl from around here. A local girl,” she said again, to make it more clear to a foreigner. “She left the whole litter of them when Billy was about two, and went off with a white man.”

“Poor children,” Mrs. MacLane said.

“They’re all right,” Mrs. Winning said. “The church takes care of them, of course, and people are always giving them things. The girl’s old enough to work now, too. She’s sixteen, but….”

“But what?” Mrs. MacLane said, when Mrs. Winning hesitated.

“Well, people talk about her a lot, you know,” Mrs. Winning said. “Think of her mother, after all. And there’s another boy, couple of years older than Billy.”

They stopped in front of the MacLane cottage and Mrs. MacLane touched Davey’s hair. “Poor unfortunate child,” she said.

“Children will call names,” Mrs. Winning said. “There’s not much you can do.”

“Well…” Mrs. MacLane said. “Poor child.”

The next day, after the dinner dishes were washed, and while Mrs. Winning and her mother-in-law were putting them away, the elder Mrs. Winning said casually, “Mrs. Blake tells me your friend Mrs. MacLane was asking around the neighbors how to get hold of the Jones boy.”

“She wants someone to help in the garden, I think,” Mrs. Winning said weakly. “She needs help in that big garden.”

“Not that kind of help,” the elder Mrs. Winning said. “You tell her about them?”

“She seemed to feel sorry for them,” Mrs. Winning said, from the depths of the pantry. She took a long time settling the plates in even stacks in order to neaten her mind. She shouldn’t have done it, she was thinking, but her mind refused to tell her why. She should have asked me first, though, she thought finally.

The next day Mrs. Winning stopped off at the cottage with Mrs. MacLane after coming up the hill from the store. They sat in the yellow kitchen and drank coffee, while the boys played in the back yard. While they were discussing the possibilities of hammocks between the apple trees there was a knock at the kitchen door and when Mrs. MacLane opened it she found a man standing there, so that she said, “Yes?” politely, and waited.

“Good morning,” the man said. He took off his hat and nodded his head at Mrs. MacLane. “Billy told me you was looking for someone to work your garden,” he said.

“Why…” Mrs. MacLane began, glancing sideways uneasily at Mrs. Winning.

“I’m Billy’s father,” the man said. He nodded his head toward the back yard and Mrs. MacLane saw Billy Jones sitting under one of the apple trees, his arms folded in front of him, his eyes on the grass at his feet.

“How do you do,” Mrs. MacLane said inadequately.

“Billy told me you said for him to come work your garden,” the man said. “Well, now, I think maybe a summer job’s too much for a boy his age, he ought to be out playing in the good weather. And that’s the kind of work I do anyway, so’s I thought I’d just come over and see if you found anyone yet.”

He was a big man, very much like Billy, except that where Billy’s hair curled only a little, his father’s hair curled tightly, with a line around his head where his hat stayed constantly and where Billy’s skin was a golden tan, his father’s skin was darker, almost bronze. When he moved, it was gracefully, like Billy, and his eyes were the same fathomless brown. “Like to work this garden,” Mr. Jones said, looking around. “Could be a mighty nice place.”

“You were very nice to come,” Mrs. MacLane said. “I certainly do need help.”

Mrs. Winning sat silently, not wanting to speak in front of Mr. Jones. She was thinking, I wish she’d ask me first, this is impossible…and Mr. Jones stood silently, listening courteously, with his dark eyes on Mrs. MacLane while she spoke. “I guess a lot of the work would be too much for a boy like Billy,” she said. “There are a lot of things I can’t even do myself, and I was sort of hoping I could get someone to give me a hand.”

“That’s fine, then,” Mr. Jones said. “Guess I can manage most of it,” he said, and smiled.

“Well,” Mrs. MacLane said, “I guess that’s all settled, then. When do you want to start?”

“How about right now?” he said.

“Grand,” Mrs. MacLane said enthusiastically, and then, “Excuse me for a minute,” to Mrs. Winning over her shoulder. She took down her gardening gloves and wide straw hat from the shelf by the door. “Isn’t it a lovely day?” she asked Mr. Jones as she stepped out into the garden while he stood back to let her pass.

“You go along home now, Bill,” Mr. Jones called as they went toward the side of the house.

“Oh, why not let him stay?” Mrs. MacLane said. Mrs. Winning heard her voice going on as they went out of sight. “He can play around the garden, and he’d probably enjoy…”

For a minute Mrs. Winning sat looking at the garden, at the corner around which Mr. Jones had followed Mrs. MacLane, and then Howard’s face appeared around the side of the door and he said, “Hi, is it nearly time to eat?”

“Howard,” Mrs. Winning said quietly, and he came in through the door and came over to her. “It’s time for you to run along home,” Mrs. Winning said. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

Howard started to protest, but she added, “I want you to go right away. Take my bag of groceries if you think you can carry it.”

Howard was impressed by her conception of his strength, and he lifted down the bag of groceries; his shoulders, already broad out of proportion, like his father’s and his grandfather’s, strained under the weight, and then he steadied on his feet. “Aren’t I strong?” he asked exultantly.

“Very strong,” Mrs. Winning said. “Tell Grandma I’ll be right up. I’ll just say good-bye to Mrs. MacLane.”

Howard disappeared through the house; Mrs. Winning heard him walking heavily under the groceries, out through the open front door and down the steps. Mrs. Winning rose and was standing by the kitchen door when Mrs. MacLane came back.

“You’re not ready to go?” Mrs. MacLane exclaimed when she saw Mrs. Winning with her jacket on. “Without finishing your coffee?”

“I’d better catch Howard,” Mrs. Winning said. “He ran along ahead.”

“I’m sorry I left you like that,” Mrs. MacLane said. She stood in the doorway beside Mrs. Winning, looking out into the garden. “How wonderful it all is,” she said, and laughed happily.

They walked together through the house; the blue curtains were up by now, and the rug with the touch of blue in the design was on the floor.

“Good-bye,” Mrs. Winning said on the front steps.

Mrs. MacLane was smiling, and following her look Mrs. Winning turned and saw Mr. Jones, his shirt off and his strong back shining in the sun as he bent with a scythe over the long grass at the side of the house. Billy lay nearby, under the shade of the bushes; he was playing with a grey kitten. “I’m going to have the finest garden in town,” Mrs. MacLane said proudly.

“You won’t have him working here past today, will you?” Mrs. Winning asked. “Of course you won’t have him any longer than just today?”

“But surely—” Mrs. MacLane began, with a tolerant smile, and Mrs. Winning, after looking at her for an incredulous minute, turned and started, indignant and embarrassed, up the hill.

Howard had brought the groceries safely home and her mother-in-law was already setting the table.

“Howard says you sent him home from MacLane’s,” her mother-in-law said, and Mrs. Winning answered briefly, “I thought it was getting late.”

The next morning when Mrs. Winning reached the cottage on her way down to the store she saw Mr. Jones swinging the scythe expertly against the side of the house, and Billy Jones and Davey sitting on the front steps watching him. “Good morning, Davey,” Mrs. Winning called, “is your mother ready to go downstreet?”

“Where’s Howard?” Davey asked, not moving.

“He stayed home with his grandma today,” Mrs. Winning said brightly. “Is your mother ready?”

“She’s making lemonade for Billy and me,” Davey said. “We’re going to have it in the garden.”

“Then tell her,” Mrs. Winning said quickly, “tell her that I said I was in a hurry and that I had to go on ahead. I’ll see her later.” She hurried on down the hill.

In the store she met Mrs. Harris, a lady whose mother had worked for the elder Mrs. Winning nearly forty years before. “Helen,” Mrs. Harris said, “you get greyer every year. You ought to stop all this running around.”

Mrs. Winning, in the store without Mrs. MacLane for the first time in weeks, smiled shyly and said that she guessed she needed a vacation.

“Vacation!” Mrs. Harris said. “Let that husband of yours do the housework for a change. He doesn’t have nuthin’ else to do.”

She laughed richly, and shook her head. “Nuthin’ else to do,” she said. “The Winnings!”

Before Mrs. Winning could step away Mrs. Harris added, her laughter penetrated by a sudden sharp curiosity: “Where’s that dressed-up friend of yours get to? Usually downstreet together, ain’t you?”

Mrs. Winning smiled courteously, and Mrs. Harris said, laughing again, “Just couldn’t believe those shoes of hers, first time I seen them. Them shoes!”

While she was laughing again Mrs. Winning escaped to the meat counter and began to discuss the potentialities of pork shoulder earnestly with the grocer. Mrs. Harris only says what everyone else says, she was thinking, are they talking like that about Mrs. MacLane? Are they laughing at her? When she thought of Mrs. MacLane she thought of the quiet house, the soft colors, the mother and son in the garden; Mrs. MacLane’s shoes were green and yellow platform sandals, odd-looking certainly next to Mrs. Winning’s solid white oxfords, but so inevitably right for Mrs. MacLane’s house, and her garden…. Mrs. Harris came up behind her and said, laughing again, “What’s she got, that Jones fellow working for her now?”

When Mrs. Winning reached home, after hurrying up the hill past the cottage, where she saw no one, her mother-in-law was waiting for her in front of the house, watching her come the last few yards. “Early enough today,” her mother-in-law said. “MacLane out of town?”

Resentful, Mrs. Winning said only, “Mrs. Harris nearly drove me out of the store, with her jokes.”

“Nothing wrong with Lucy Harris getting away from that man of hers wouldn’t cure,” the elder Mrs. Winning said. Together, they began to walk around the house to the back door. Mrs. Winning, as they walked, noticed that the grass under the trees had greened up nicely, and that the nasturtiums beside the house were bright.

“I’ve got something to say to you, Helen,” the elder Mrs. Winning said finally.

“Yes?” her daughter-in-law said.

“It’s the MacLane girl, about her, I mean. You know her so well, you ought to talk to her about that colored man working there.”

“I suppose so,” Mrs. Winning said.

“You sure you told her? You told her about those people?”

“I told her,” Mrs. Winning said.

“He’s there every blessed day,” her mother-in-law said. “And working out there without his shirt on. He goes in the house.”

And that evening Mr. Burton, next-door neighbor to Mrs. MacLane, dropped in to see the Howard Winnings about getting a new lot of shingles at the mill; he turned, suddenly, to Mrs. Winning, who was sitting sewing next to her mother-in-law at the table in the front room, and raised his voice a little when he said, “Helen, I wish you’d tell your friend Mrs. MacLane to keep that kid of hers out of my vegetables.”

“Davey?” Mrs. Winning said involuntarily.

“No,” Mr. Burton said, while all the Winnings looked at the younger Mrs. Winning, “no, the other one, the colored boy. He’s been running loose through our back yard. Makes me sort of mad, that kid coming in spoiling other people’s property. You know,” he added, turning to the Howard Winnings, “you know, that does make a person mad.” There was a silence, and then Mr. Burton added, rising heavily, “Guess I’ll say good-night to you people.”

They all attended him to the door and came back to their work in silence. I’ve got to do something, Mrs. Winning was thinking, pretty soon they’ll stop coming to me first, they’ll tell someone else to speak to me. She looked up, found her mother-in-law looking at her, and they both looked down quickly.

Consequently Mrs. Winning went to the store the next morning earlier than usual, and she and Howard crossed the street just above the MacLane house, and went down the hill on the other side.

“Aren’t we going to see Davey?” Howard asked once, and Mrs. Winning said carelessly, “Not today, Howard. Maybe your father will take you out to the mill this afternoon.”

She avoided looking across the street at the MacLane house, and hurried to keep up with Howard.

Mrs. Winning met Mrs. MacLane occasionally after that at the store or the post office, and they spoke pleasantly. When Mrs. Winning passed the cottage after the first week or so, she was no longer embarrassed about going by, and even looked at it frankly once or twice. The garden was going beautifully; Mr. Jones’s broad back was usually visible through the bushes, and Billy Jones sat on the steps or lay on the grass with Davey.

One morning on her way down the hill Mrs. Winning heard a conversation between Davey MacLane and Billy Jones; they were in the bushes together and she heard Davey’s high familiar voice saying, “Billy, you want to build a house with me today?”

“Okay,” Billy said. Mrs. Winning slowed her steps a little to hear.

“We’ll build a big house out of branches,” Davey said excitedly, “and when it’s finished we’ll ask my mommy if we can have lunch out there.”

“You can’t build a house just out of branches,” Billy said. “You ought to have wood, and boards.”

“And chairs and tables and dishes,” Davey agreed. “And walls.”

“Ask your mommy can we have two chairs out here,” Billy said. “Then we can pretend the whole garden is our house.”

“And I’ll get us some cookies, too,” Davey said. “And we’ll ask my mommy and your daddy to come in our house.” Mrs. Winning heard them shouting as she went down along the sidewalk.

You have to admit, she told herself as though she were being strictly just, you have to admit that he’s doing a lot with that garden; it’s the prettiest garden on the street. And Billy acts as though he had as much right there as Davey.

As the summer wore on into long hot days undistinguishable one from another, so that it was impossible to tell with any real accuracy whether the light shower had been yesterday or the day before, the Winnings moved out into their yard to sit after supper, and in the warm darkness Mrs. Winning sometimes found an opportunity of sitting next to her husband so that she could touch his arm; she was never able to teach Howard to run to her and put his head in her lap, or inspire him with other than the perfunctory Winning affection, but she consoled herself with the thought that at least they were a family, a solid respectable thing.

The hot weather kept up, and Mrs. Winning began to spend more time in the store, postponing the long aching walk up the hill in the sun. She stopped and chatted with the grocer, with other young mothers in the town, with older friends of her mother-in-law’s, talking about the weather, the reluctance of the town to put in a decent swimming pool, the work that had to be done before school started in the fall, chickenpox, the P.T.A. One morning she met Mrs. Burton in the store, and they spoke of their husbands, the heat, and the hot-weather occupations of their children before Mrs. Burton said: “By the way, Johnny will be six on Saturday and he’s having a birthday party; can Howard come?”

“Wonderful,” Mrs. Winning said, thinking, His good white shorts, the dark blue shirt, a carefully-wrapped present.

“Just about eight children,” Mrs. Burton said, with the loving carelessness mothers use in planning the birthday parties of their children. “They’ll stay for supper, of course—send Howard down about three-thirty.”

“That sounds so nice,” Mrs. Winning said. “He’ll be delighted when I tell him.”

“I thought I’d have them all play outdoors most of the time,” Mrs. Burton said. “In this weather. And then perhaps a few games indoors, and supper. Keep it simple—you know.” She hesitated, running her finger around and around the top rim of a can of coffee. “Look,” she said, “I hope you won’t mind me asking, but would it be all right with you if I didn’t invite the MacLane boy?”

Mrs. Winning felt sick for a minute, and had to wait for her voice to even out before she said lightly, “It’s all right with me if it’s all right with you; why do you have to ask me?”

Mrs. Burton laughed. “I just thought you might mind if he didn’t come.”

Mrs. Winning was thinking. Something bad has happened, somehow people think they know something about me that they won’t say, they all pretend it’s nothing, but this never happened to me before; I live with the Winnings, don’t I? “Really,” she said, putting the weight of the old Winning house into her voice, “why in the world would it bother me?” Did I take it too seriously, she was wondering, did I seem too anxious, should I have let it go?

Mrs. Burton was embarrassed, and she set the can of coffee down on the shelf and began to examine the other shelves studiously. “I’m sorry I mentioned it at all,” she said.

Mrs. Winning felt that she had to say something further, something to state her position with finality, so that no longer would Mrs. Burton, at least, dare to use such a tone to a Winning, presume to preface a question with “I hope you don’t mind me asking.” “After all,” Mrs. Winning said carefully, weighing the words, “she’s like a second mother to Billy.”

Mrs. Burton, turning to look at Mrs. Winning for confirmation, grimaced and said, “Good Lord, Helen!”

Mrs. Winning shrugged and then smiled and Mrs. Burton smiled and then Mrs. Winning said, “I do feel so sorry for the little boy, though.”

Mrs. Burton said, “Such a sweet little thing, too.”

Mrs. Winning had just said, “He and Billy are together all the time now,” when she looked up and saw Mrs. MacLane regarding her from the end of the aisle of shelves; it was impossible to tell whether she had heard them or not. For a minute Mrs. Winning looked steadily back at Mrs. MacLane, and then she said, with just the right note of cordiality, “Good morning, Mrs. MacLane. Where is your little boy this morning?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Winning,” Mrs. MacLane said, and moved on past the aisle of shelves, and Mrs. Burton caught Mrs. Winning’s arm and made a desperate gesture of hiding her face and, unable to help themselves, both she and Mrs. Winning began to laugh.

Soon after that, although the grass in the Winning yard under the maple trees stayed smooth and green, Mrs. Winning began to notice in her daily trips past the cottage that Mrs. MacLane’s garden was suffering from the heat. The flowers wilted under the morning sun, and no longer stood up fresh and bright; the grass was browning slightly and the rose bushes Mrs. MacLane had put in so optimistically were noticeably dying. Mr. Jones seemed always cool, working steadily; sometimes bent down with his hands in the earth, sometimes tall against the side of the house, setting up a trellis or pruning a tree, but the blue curtains hung lifelessly at the windows. Mrs. MacLane still smiled at Mrs. Winning in the store, and then one day they met at the gate of Mrs. MacLane’s garden and, after hesitating for a minute, Mrs. MacLane said, “Can you come in for a few minutes? I’d like to have a talk, if you have time.”

“Surely,” Mrs. Winning said courteously, and followed Mrs. MacLane up the walk, still luxuriously bordered with flowering bushes, but somehow disenchanted, as though the summer heat had baked away the vivacity from the ground. In the familiar living-room Mrs. Winning sat down on a straight chair, holding herself politely stiff, while Mrs. MacLane sat as usual in her armchair.

“How is Davey?” Mrs. Winning asked finally, since Mrs. MacLane did not seem disposed to start any conversation.

“He’s very well,” Mrs. MacLane said, and smiled as she always did when speaking of Davey. “He’s out back with Billy.”

There was a quiet minute, and then Mrs. MacLane said, staring at the blue bowl on the coffee table, “What I wanted to ask you is, what on earth is gone wrong?”

Mrs. Winning had been holding herself stiff in readiness for some such question, and when she said, “I don’t know what you mean,” she thought, I sound exactly like Mother Winning, and realized, I’m enjoying this, just as she would; and no matter what she thought of herself she was unable to keep from adding, “Is something wrong?”

“Of course,” Mrs. MacLane said. She stared at the blue bowl, and said slowly, “When I first came, everyone was so nice, and they seemed to like Davey and me and want to help us.”

That’s wrong, Mrs. Winning was thinking, you mustn’t ever talk about whether people like you, that’s bad taste.

“And the garden was going so well,” Mrs. MacLane said helplessly. “And now, no one ever does more than just speak to us—I used to say ‘Good morning’ over the fence to Mrs. Burton, and she’d come to the fence and we’d talk about the garden, and now she just says ‘Morning’ and goes in the house—and no one ever smiles, or anything.”

This is dreadful, Mrs. Winning thought, this is childish, this is complaining. People treat you as you treat them, she thought; she wanted desperately to go over and take Mrs. MacLane’s hand and ask her to come back and be one of the nice people again; but she only sat straighter in the chair and said, “I’m sure you must be mistaken. I’ve never heard anyone speak of it.”

“Are you sure?” Mrs. MacLane turned and looked at her. “Are you sure it isn’t because of Mr. Jones working here?”

Mrs. Winning lifted her chin a little higher and said, “Why on earth would anyone around here be rude to you because of Jones?”

Mrs. MacLane came with her to the door, both of them planning vigorously for the days some time next week, when they would all go swimming, when they would have a picnic, and Mrs. Winning went down the hill thinking, The nerve of her, trying to blame the colored folks.

Toward the end of the summer there was a bad thunderstorm, breaking up the prolonged hot spell. It raged with heavy wind and rain over the town all night, sweeping without pity through the trees, pulling up young bushes and flowers ruthlessly; a barn was struck on one side of town, the wires pulled down on another. In the morning Mrs. Winning opened the back door to find the Winning yard littered with small branches from the maples, the grass bent almost flat to the ground.

Her mother-in-law came to the door behind her. “Quite a storm,” she said, “did it wake you?”

“I woke up once and went to look at the children,” Mrs. Winning said. “It must have been about three o’clock.”

“I was up later,” her mother-in-law said. “I looked at the children too; they were both asleep.”

They turned together and went in to start breakfast.

Later in the day Mrs. Winning started down to the store; she had almost reached the MacLane cottage when she saw Mrs. MacLane standing in the front garden with Mr. Jones standing beside her and Billy Jones with Davey in the shadows of the front porch. They were all looking silently at a great branch from one of the Burtons’ trees that lay across the center of the garden, crushing most of the flowering bushes and pinning down what was to have been a glorious tulip bed. As Mrs. Winning stopped, watching, Mrs. Burton came out on to her front porch to survey the storm-damage, and Mrs. MacLane called to her, “Good morning, Mrs. Burton, it looks like we have part of your tree over here.”

“Looks so,” Mrs. Burton said, and she went back into her house and closed the door flatly.

Mrs. Winning watched while Mrs. MacLane stood quietly for a minute. Then she looked up at Mr. Jones almost hopefully and she and Mr. Jones looked at one another for a long time. Then Mrs. MacLane said, her clear voice carrying lightly across the air washed clean by the storm: “Do you think I ought to give it up, Mr. Jones? Go back to the city where I’ll never have to see another garden?”

Mr. Jones shook his head despondently, and Mrs. MacLane, her shoulders tired, went slowly over and sat on her front steps and Davey came and sat next to her. Mr. Jones took hold of the great branch angrily and tried to move it, shaking it and pulling until his shoulders tensed with the strength he was bringing to bear, but the branch only gave slightly and stayed, clinging to the garden.

“Leave it alone, Mr. Jones,” Mrs. MacLane said finally. “Leave it for the next people to move!”

But still Mr. Jones pulled against the branch, and then suddenly Davey stood up and cried out, “There’s Mrs. Winning! Hi, Mrs. Winning!”

Mrs. MacLane and Mr. Jones both turned, and Mrs. MacLane waved and called out, “Hello!”

Mrs. Winning swung around without speaking and started, with great dignity, back up the hill toward the old Winning house.

Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors

THERE USED TO BE a time of year in San Francisco—in late March, I believe—when there was fine long windy weather, and the air all over the city had a touch of salt and the freshness of the sea. And then, some time after the wind first started, you could look around Market Street and Van Ness and Kearney, and the fleet was in. That, of course, was some time ago, but you could look out around the Golden Gate, unbridged at that time, and there would be the battleships. There may have been aircraft carriers and destroyers, and I believe I recall one submarine, but to Dot and me then they were battleships, all of them. They would be riding out there on the water, quiet and competently grey, and the streets would be full of sailors, walking with the roll of the sea and looking in shop windows.

I never knew what the fleet came in for; my grandmother said positively that it was for refueling; but from the time the wind first started, Dot and I would become more aware, walking closer together, and dropping our voices when we talked. Although we were all of thirty miles from where the fleet lay, when we walked with our backs to the ocean we could feel the battleships riding somewhere behind and beyond us, and when we looked toward the ocean we narrowed our eyes, almost able to see across thirty miles and into a sailor’s face.

It was the sailors, of course. My mother told us about the kind of girls who followed sailors, and my grandmother told us about the kind of sailors who followed girls. When we told Dot’s mother the fleet was in, she would say earnestly, “Don’t go near any sailors, you two.” Once, when Dot and I were about twelve, and the fleet was in, my mother stood us up and looked at us intensely for a minute, and then she turned around to my grandmother and said, “I don’t approve of young girls going to the movies alone at night,” and my grandmother said, “Nonsense, they won’t come this far down the peninsula; I know sailors.”

Dot and I were permitted only one movie at night a week, anyway, and even then they sent my ten-year-old brother along with us. The first time the three of us started off to the movies together my mother looked at Dot and me again and then speculatively at my brother, who had red curly hair, and started to say something, and then looked at my grandmother and changed her mind.

We lived in Burlingame, which is far enough away from San Francisco to have palm trees in the gardens, but near enough so that Dot and I were taken into San Francisco, to the Emporium, to get our spring coats each year. Dot’s mother usually gave Dot her coat money, which Dot handed over to my mother, and then Dot and I got identical coats, with my mother officiating. This was because Dot’s mother was never well enough to go into San Francisco shopping, and particularly not with Dot and me. Consequently every year, some time after the wind started and the fleet came in, Dot and I, in service-weight silk stockings which we kept for that occasion, and each with a cardboard pocketbook containing a mirror, a dime for luck, and a chiffon handkerchief caught at one side and hanging down, got into the back seat of my mother’s car with my mother and grandmother in the front, and headed for San Francisco and the fleet.

We always got our coats in the morning, went to the Pig’n’-Whistle for lunch, and then, while Dot and I were finishing our chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce and walnuts, my grandmother phoned my Uncle Oliver and arranged to meet him at the launch which took us out to the fleet.

My Uncle Oliver was taken along partly because he was a man and partly because in the previous war he had been a radio operator on a battleship and partly because another uncle of mine, an Uncle Paul, was still with the Navy (my grandmother thought he had something to do with a battleship named the Santa Volita, or Bonita, or possibly Carmelita) and my Uncle Oliver was handy for asking people who looked like they might know my Uncle Paul if they did know him. As soon as we got on a boat my grandmother would say, as though she had never thought of it before, “Look, that one over there seems to be an officer; Ollie, just go over casually and ask him if he knows old Paul.”

Oliver, having been one himself, didn’t think that sailors were particularly dangerous to Dot and me if we had my mother and my grandmother with us, but he loved ships, and so he went with us and left us the minute we were on board; while we stepped cautiously over the clean decks eyeing the lifeboats apprehensively, my Uncle Oliver would touch the grey paint affectionately and go off in search of the radio apparatus.

When we met my Uncle Oliver at the launch he would usually buy Dot and me an ice-cream cone each and on the launch he would point out various boats around and name them for us. He usually got into a conversation with the sailor running the launch, and sooner or later he managed to say modestly, “I was to sea, back in ’17,” and the sailor would nod respectfully. When it came time for us to leave the launch and go up a stairway on to the battleship, my mother whispered to Dot and me, “Keep your skirts down,” and Dot and I climbed the ladder, holding on with one hand and with the other wrapping our skirts tight around us into a bunch in front which we held on to. My grandmother always preceded us onto the battleship and my mother and Uncle Oliver followed us. When we got on board my mother took one of us by the arm and my grandmother took the other and we walked slowly around all of the ship they allowed us to see, excepting only the lowest levels, which alarmed my grandmother. We looked solemnly at cabins, decks which my grandmother said were aft, and lights which she said were port (both sides were port to my grandmother; she believed that starboard was up, in the sense that the highest mast always pointed at the north star.) Usually we saw cannon—all guns were cannon—which my Uncle Oliver, in what must have been harmless teasing, assured my grandmother were kept loaded all the time. “In case of mutiny,” he told my grandmother.

There were always a great many sight-seers on the battleships, and my Uncle Oliver was fond of gathering a little group of boys and young men around him to explain how the radio system worked. When he said he had been a radio operator back in ’17 someone was sure to ask him, “Did you ever send out an S.O.S.?” and my Uncle Oliver would nod heavily, and say, “But I’m still here to tell about it.”

Once, while my Uncle Oliver was telling about ’17 and my mother and my grandmother and Dot were looking over the rail at the ocean, I saw a dress that looked like my mother’s and followed it for quite a way down the battleship before the lady turned around and I realized that it was not my mother and I was lost. Remembering what my grandmother had told me, that I was always safe if I didn’t lose my head, I stood still and looked around until I isolated a tall man in a uniform with lots of braid. That will be a captain, I thought, and he will certainly take care of me. He was very polite. I told him I was lost and thought my mother and my grandmother and my friend Dot and my Uncle Oliver were down the boat a ways but I was afraid to go back alone. He said he would help me find them, and he took my arm and led me down the boat. Before very long we met my mother and my grandmother hurrying along looking for me with Dot coming along behind them as fast as she could. When my grandmother saw me she ran forward and seized my arm, pulling me away from the captain and shaking me. “You gave us the scare of our lives,” she said.

“She was just lost, that’s all,” the captain said.

“I’m glad we found her in time,” my grandmother said, walking backward with me to my mother.

The captain bowed and went away, and my mother took my other arm and shook me. “Aren’t you ashamed?” she said. Dot stared at me solemnly.

“But he was a captain—” I began.

“He might have said he was a captain,” my grandmother said, “but he was a marine.”

“A marine!” my mother said, looking over the side to see if the launch was there to take us back. “Get Oliver and tell him we’ve seen enough,” she said to my grandmother.

Because of what happened that evening, that was the last year we were allowed to see the fleet. We dropped Uncle Oliver off at home, as usual, and my mother and my grandmother took Dot and me to the Merry-Go-Round for dinner. We always had dinner in San Francisco after the fleet, and went to a movie and got home to Burlingame late in the evening. We always had dinner in the Merry-Go-Round, where the food came along on a moving platform and you grabbed it as it went by. We went there because Dot and I loved it, and next to the battleships it was the most dangerous place in San Francisco, because you had to pay fifteen cents for every dish you took and didn’t finish, and Dot and I were expected to pay for these mistakes out of our allowances. This last evening Dot and I lost forty-five cents, mainly because of a mocha cream dessert that Dot hadn’t known was full of coconut. The movie Dot and I chose was full, although the usher outside told my grandmother there were plenty of seats. My mother refused to wait in line to get our money back, so my grandmother said we had to go on in and take our chances on seats. As soon as two seats were vacant my grandmother shoved Dot and me toward them, and we sat down. The picture was well under way when the two seats next to Dot emptied, and we were looking for my grandmother and my mother when Dot looked around suddenly and then grabbed my arm. “Look,” she said in a sort of groan, and there were two sailors coming along the row of seats toward the empty ones. They reached the seats just as my mother and grandmother got down to the other end of the row, and my grandmother had just time to say loudly, “You leave those girls alone,” when two seats a few aisles away were vacated and they had to go sit down.

Dot moved far over in her seat next to me and clung to my arm.

“What are they doing?” I whispered.

“They’re just sitting there,” Dot said. “What do you think I ought to do?”

I leaned cautiously around Dot and looked. “Don’t pay any attention,” I said. “Maybe they’ll go away.”

“You can talk,” Dot said tragically, “they’re not next to you.”

“I’m next to you,” I said reasonably, “that’s pretty close.”

“What are they doing now?” Dot asked.

I leaned forward again. “They’re looking at the picture,” I said.

“I can’t stand it,” Dot said. “I want to go home.”

Panic overwhelmed both of us at once, and fortunately my mother and my grandmother saw us running up the aisle and caught us outside.

“What did they say?” my grandmother demanded. “I’ll tell the usher.”

My mother said if Dot would calm down enough to talk she would take us into the tea room next door and get us each a hot chocolate. When we got inside and were sitting down we told my mother and my grandmother we were fine now and instead of a hot chocolate we would have a chocolate sundae apiece. Dot had even started to cheer up a little when the door of the tea room opened and two sailors walked in. With one wild bound Dot was in back of my grandmother’s chair, cowering and clutching my grandmother’s arm. “Don’t let them get me,” she wailed.

“They followed us,” my mother said tautly.

My grandmother put her arms around Dot. “Poor child,” she said, “you’re safe with us.”

Dot had to stay at my house that night. We sent my brother over to Dot’s mother to tell her that Dot was staying with me and that Dot had bought a grey tweed coat with princess lines, very practical and warmly interlined. She wore it all that year.