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the newel post in the hall. Have a care now , said Molly, passing me on the stair, for I was carrying the old lady’s afternoon half-bottle of Madeira. I saw myself stop on the landing to look at the light streaming through the leaded pane that showed the Knight of Malta with his white cross on his black robe, to hunt for the bit of misplaced red near his nose.
    “‘Stand just so,’ Martin said,” I said, “‘and if the light’s proper you’ll see the old Hospitaler bleed from the nose.’”
    “Enough! Enough!” said my mother, but I was already past her, almost among them, putting myself to dream. I passed Lady Rachel’s half-closed door, that room, muffled with voile, where she endlessly wanted to be resting, and I could almost see her murmur, hand at her forehead, the way she often would at the nursery hour, Hours to go , before good night.
    “Hours to go, before good night,” I whispered, going by, seeing, as I used to, the pale blue, ladylike hours that stretched before her until she could re-enter the muffled room.
    “Child! Child!” said my mother, but I was already on the third floor landing. I knocked on the door and opened it.
    The old lady looked up, as if from spinning. Da bist du ! she said, all the past in her lap, and then I was in the room with her; I was there, with them.
    Here comes the handsome waiter , she said. And what does he say ?
    “Guten Tag, gnädige Frau,” I said, very stiff with the tray.
    Ach , such ton he has , das kleine Herrgöttle von Bieberach , she said, grinning. You remember what that means ?
    “Little Mr. God from Beeberock,” I said.
    Aha , she said. I see you have not forgotten.
    No, I have not forgotten, I have never forgotten, I was about to answer, but then, wee at the small end of the telescope, my mother cried out, and came forward. She cannot reach me, I thought, for now I am with them. I opened my mouth to answer, but the long arm grew and reached me, shaking, shaking, and I dropped the tray, and all was smashed.
    In bed that night, and nights after, I pressed my knuckles against my knees and waited, but I could not get back. It was because someone else knew now, I thought. Someone else had a paring of me. For now and then I caught my mother watching me. But she never spoke to me of the Goodmans again.

Chapter V. Miss Pridden.
    O N THE DAY OF the wedding I was up early and dressed for school as usual, having all that week refused to attend the ceremony even in the serge suit they had hopefully got for me. They were leaving for Memphis immediately after; my uncle had taken a week off from the mill and had bought a second-hand car.
    Now, as I went about the room that was to be mine from tonight, I was almost glad of the week alone and of their going, only wanting them to know that it was I who dispensed with them. I had grown up some in the past weeks, if growth can be said to come by stations of recognition of what one cannot have. If my mother had not come in just then to say good-by to me in just that way, in just that dress, might I never have gone to look for Johnny that evening?
    But she did come, in that way, precisely minted for her eleven-o’clock business, and in that dress, with the sharpened waist, the unfamiliarly wide skirt with its assertive rustle. And for all the tender rue with which she reached for me, I saw the little raised comb of pride that hardens upon a woman, once she has a man again to show the world. I ducked her kiss.
    “Do not mind the dress,” she said, still reaching. And if I could bend from the sound tape now, I would bend toward her. Meeting her there, in that impossible tangent, I could explain to her that when we come of age in our own flesh we have more charity for the image of what our parents did to beget us, and after; that it is only the young who, harsh in their own straits, want to keep that image eunuch and dry. But the tape has no mercy; I answered her then.
    “It looks … like a client’s dress,” I said,