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partner, Mr. Krieger, about something called a mortgage, and about someone called a mortgagee. It would have required an impossibly long lecture on the law of mortgages to make clear to the children some thousands of hours of conversation dinned into their small ears. Yet Herbie and Felicia had made many such transactions. Indeed, even now the boy's cousin, Cliff, held his roller skates pending Herbie's repayment of fifteen cents, which he had borrowed in order to see a crucial episode of a serial movie. Herbie would have been amazed to know that he had thereby been granted a “mortgage” and that Cliff was a “mortgagee.”
    “Papa,” said the mother at last as her husband fell silent long enough to eat some stew, “I had an interesting phone call today.”
    “You had a phone call?” Mr. Bookbinder's surprise was genuine. He was not aware that anything resembling an event had taken place in his wife's life for fifteen years.
    “Yes, from a very important gentleman. A gentleman who happens to think highly of your son.”
    The mystery of his mother's unusual kindness was suddenly explained for Herbie. His heart thudding, he began to plan speedily how to handle the coming crisis.
    “In fact,” went on the mother, her weary face lit with liveliness, momentarily suggesting beauty that had faded many years ago, “this very important gentleman thinks so highly of your son that he's coming here after supper to pay us a visit.”
    “Who is it?” asked the father, in whom the spirit of banter was not strong.
    The mother uncovered the glowing gem of news with reluctance. “Mr. Gauss, the principal—the
principal
—of Herbie's school.”
    “That's very nice of him,” said Jacob Bookbinder awkwardly, after a pause.
    “Aw, I bet I know what that old Mr. Gauss wants,” said Herbie.
    “Ah, he wants something,” said Mr. Bookbinder. This brought the situation nearer reality.
    “Sure, I bet he wants me and Fleece to go to that old camp of his,” said Herbie, adding quickly as he saw disapproval on the faces of both parents, “that camp that Lucille Glass and Lennie Krieger are going to.”
    “Krieger's boy going to camp? Since when?” said the father.
    “How do you know Lucille Glass?” said the mother.
    “I met her in school,” answered Herbie, shrewdly ignoring his father's question. He went on, “I don't feel like going to no camp, an' I bet Fleece don't either.”
    “I hate camps,” said Felicia, whose knowledge of the ways of a parental mind was not inferior to Herbie's.
    “How do you know you hate camps when you've never been to one?” said Mrs. Bookbinder.
    “What I'd like to know is, where does Krieger suddenly get money to send a boy to camp?” said the father irritably.
    Herbie detected a drift toward a collision between the facts of his imagination and those of brute nature. “Well, Lennie
says
he's going anyway,” he observed, “but he's an awful liar, you know.”
    “That's Krieger, isn't it?” said Mr. Bookbinder to his wife. “A man with a bank loan on his furniture and a Chevrolet car he has to borrow money from the business to pay the installments on, and the boy goes to camp. Glass, of course, can send a girl to camp.”
    “She's a sweet little thing,” said Mrs. Bookbinder. “Help me clear, Felice.”
    “She has red hair,” said Herbie, tingling all over at the mention of the girl. “I hate girls with red hair.”
    “I see her in gym. She's a baby,” said Felicia as she scraped and stacked the dirty dishes.
    The doorbell rang. Herbie jumped in his chair.
    “That must be Mr. Gauss, but he's so early!” cried Mrs. Bookbinder, untying her apron with swift hands. “Pa, put on your jacket and go in the parlor. Herbie, answer the bell. Felice, shut the dining-room doors and finish cleaning up quietly.”
    These directives issued, she hurried to her bedroom, while the family moved to obey. The lines of authority were laid down in the Bookbinder household, and Mrs. Bookbinder