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fixing Irmgard with her still-sleeping eyes. She means Bradley; she thought he and Irmgard were perfectly sweet.
    Now, this is just the way they don’t like Irmgard spoken to, and Irmgard knows they will not invite Mrs. Bloodworth again, either. They weigh and measure and sift everything people say, and Irmgard’s father looks cold and bored, and her mother gives a waking tiger’s look his way, smiles. They act together, and read each other’s thoughts – just as Freddy and Irmgard did. But, large, and old, and powerful, they have greater powers: they see through walls, and hear whispered conversations miles away. Irmgard’s father looks cold, and Irmgard, without knowing it, imitates his look.
    “Bradley is Irmgard’s cousin,” her mother says.
    N ow Irmgard, who cannot remember anything, who looked for a paintbox when Freddy had gone, who doesn’t remember that she was kidnapped and that Bradley once saved her life – now Irmgard remembers something. It seems that Freddy was sent on an errand. He went off down the sidewalk, which was heaving, cracked, edged with ribbon grass; and when he came to a certain place he was no longer there. Something was waiting for him there, and when they came looking for him, only Irmgard knew that whatever had been waiting for Freddy was the disaster, the worst thing. Irmgard’s mother said, “Imagine sending a child near the woods at this time of day!” Sure enough, there were trees nearby. And only Irmgard knew that whatever had been waiting for Freddy had come out of the woods. It was the worst thing; and it could not be helped. But she does not know exactly what it was. And then, was it Freddy? It might have been Bradley, or even herself.
    Naturally, no child should go near a strange forest. Thereare chances of getting lost. There is the witch who changes children into birds.
    Irmgard grows red in the face and says loudly, “I remember my dream. Freddy went on a message and got lost.”
    “Oh, no dreams at breakfast, please,” her father says.
    “Nothing is as dreary as a dream,” her mother says, agreeing. “I think we might make a rule on that: no dreams at breakfast. Otherwise it gets to be a habit.”
    Her father cheers up. Nothing cheers them up so fast as a new rule, for when it comes to making rules, they are as bad as children. You should see them at croquet.

Saturday

I
    A fter the girl across the aisle had glanced at Gérard a few times (though he was not talking to her, not even trying to), she went down to sit at the front of the bus, near the driver. She left behind a bunch of dark, wet, purple lilac wrapped in wet newspaper. When Gérard followed to tell her, she did not even turn her head. Feeling foolish, he suddenly got down anywhere, in a part of Montreal he had never seen before, and in no time at all he was lost. He stood on the curb of a gloomy little street recently swept by a spring tempest of snow. A few people, bundled as Russians, scuffled by. A winter haze like a winter evening sifted down through a lattice of iron and steel. The sudden lowering of day, he saw, was caused by an overheadrailway. This railway was smart and new, as if it had been unpacked out of sawdust quite recently and snapped into place.
    What was it for? “Of all the unnecessary …” Gérard muttered, just as his father might. Talking aloud to oneself was a family habit. You could grumble away for minutes at home without anyone’s taking the least notice. “Yes, they have to spend our money somehow,” he went on, just as if he were old enough to vote and pay taxes. Luckily no one heard him. Everyone’s attention had been fixed by a funeral procession of limousines grinding along in inches of slush. The Russian bundles crossed themselves, but Gérard kept his hands in his pockets. “Clogging up the streets,” he offered, as an opinion about dying and being taken somewhere for burial. At that moment the last cars broke away, climbed the curb, and continued along the