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help?”
    “You don’t like that, do you?”
    “If that’s how it is, that’s it.”
    “I asked you something.”
    “Well—no.”
    “I knew you wouldn’t. I know blood when I see it. You never speak of your family—”
    “In Nevada, that’s not healthy.”
    “Why not, Duke?”
    “Account of Grandma. In my case, Great-grandma. She dealt faro, ’tis said. In a house. In a gambling house, ’tis said. At Virginia City, in the time of the Comstock Lode, when pretty girls did very well. Out there genealogy’s not popular.”
    “Miss Duke, she’s the one?”
    “Miss Duquesne, really.”
    “And you changed a name like that?”
    I said everyone called in Du Quesny, and explained about Nevada, how one bunch that came in, especially girls, were French, another Italian, and so on. I asked: “What’s the matter with Duke? At least it’s short.”
    “You should be ashamed.”
    Then she said, very solemn: “All right, but one thing I guarantee: I’ll figure a way that Miss Duquesne’s great-grandson Duke won’t put on a white coat. I may need help from Bill, but I’ll see that it doesn’t happen.”
    “You’re close to Bill, aren’t you?”
    “I don’t say who I’m close to. Right now, it’s enough we have one little thing, a ray of some kind of sunshine. That you won’t have to be in it. That there’s something, if I’m called on to meet Miss Duquesne, that I’ll be able to tell her.”

CHAPTER V
    F ROM THEN ON WE WORKED on the rhubarb, hardly mentioning anything else. She blocked Val all the way, from the kind of food to be served to what his girls would wear. She said it couldn’t be pink, the Ladyship’s summer color, but had to be proper black, with white aprons and caps. To park the cars, she said, Homer could not wear his admiral’s suit, the blue-and-gold he wore for his parking job, but must have a quiet maroon, with the same maroon cap a private chauffeur wears. When my white coat was brought, she ripped the lapels with scissors, where MR. VAL was stitched in red, and bit out the threads with her teeth, to leave it perfectly plain. But whatever she dished out he took, in a peculiarly excited way, because the more she blocked him the more she really gave ground. The only real question was: would the party be given at all, and on that she never said no. I felt, from the look of fear in her eyes, that she couldn’t.
    At last the Fourth rolled around, part of a long hot weekend, but with 5 not running much traffic. It was to be a cocktail party, scheduled for late afternoon, so things were quiet all morning. He went to town around noon, and I had a look at the lawn, which I’d mown and combed with a rake, to make sure no drunk in a car on 5 had pitched a beer can to mar its pool-table green. When I came back past the house, she called would I please come in and look at her dress. I went in the living-room and she came out in crepy orange, with white shoes and a necklace of some kind of pearl. She looked like a guppy that grew the size of a whale, but I took it serious and meditated some time. With her coloring, I said at last, and the orange shade of the dress, it should tote up kind of Spanish, but the white things didn’t blend. She asked if red would be better, and I said it would. She went to her bedroom and came back changed, with the orange dress still on, but with dark red shoes and a necklace of dark red beads, big ones, I think made of wood. I said it looked much better, and was glad I could really mean it. Her eyes got big and black, and she seemed childishly pleased.
    Around two, when I was in my room half dressed, things began to happen. First came Homer, in the pickup truck he used, with a dishwasher boy named Bardie, and all kinds of stuff on board: a hot unit, a cold unit, hampers of liquor, glasses, dishes, and so on. The two of them carried all that into the kitchen, then got their clothes, which hung in the cab on hangers, and came to my parlor to dress. The maroon