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out everything that was in her mind, except about Jack.
       He never smiled nor answered, and the only difference it made in him was that he kept his eyes on her face when she was in the room and patiently on the door when she was not. What a profound difference this was, she could not know; but the flat starved body tissues were not all that were slowly filling out.
       A day came at last when the Prodds were at lunch—”dinner”, they called it—and there was a fumbling at the inside of the door of Jack’s room. Prodd exchanged a glance with his wife, then rose and opened it.
       “Here, now, you can’t come out like that.” He called, “Ma, throw in my other overalls.”
       He was weak and very uncertain, but he was on his feet. They helped him to the table and he slumped there, his eyes cloaked and stupid, ignoring the food until Mrs Prodd tantalized his nostrils with a spoonful. Then he took the spoon in his broad fist and got his mouth on it and looked past his hand at her. She patted his shoulder and told him it was just wonderful, how well he did.
       “Well, Ma, you don’t have to treat him like a two-year-old,” said Prodd. Perhaps it was the eyes, but he was troubled again.
       She pressed his hand warningly; he understood and said no more about it just then. But later in the night when he thought she was asleep, she said suddenly, “I do so have to treat him like a two-year-old, Prodd. Maybe even younger.”
       “How’s that?”
       “With Grace,” she said, “it was like that. Not so bad, though. She was like six, when she started to get better. Dolls. When she didn’t get apple pie with the rest of us one time, she cried her heart out. It was like growing up all over again. Faster, I mean, but like travelling the same road again.”
       “You think he’s going to be like that?”
       “Isn’t he like a two-year-old?”
       “First I ever saw six foot tall.”
       She snorted in half-pretended annoyance. “We’ll raise him up just like a child.”
       He was quiet for a time. Then. “What’ll we call him?”
       “Not Jack,” she said before she could stop herself.
       He grunted an agreement. He didn’t know quite what to say then.
       She said, “We’ll bide our time about that. He’s got his own name. It wouldn’t be right to put another to him. You just wait. He’ll get back to where he remembers it.”
       He thought about it for a long time. He said, “Ma, I hope we’re doing the right thing.” But by then she was asleep.
    There were miracles.
       The Prodds thought of them, as achievements, as successes, but they were miracles. There was the time when Prodd found two strong hands at the other end of a piece of 12´12 he was snaking out of the barn. There was the time Mrs Prodd found her patient holding a ball of yarn, holding it and looking at it only because it was red. There was the time he found a full bucket by the pump and brought it inside. It was a long while, however, before he learned to work the handle.
       When he had been there a year Mrs Prodd remembered and baked him a cake. Impulsively she put four candles on it. The Prodds beamed at him as he stared at the little flames, fascinated. His strange eyes caught and held hers, then Prodd’s. “Blow it out, son.”
       Perhaps he visualized the act. Perhaps it was the result of the warmth outflowing from the couple, the wishing for him, the warmth of caring. He bent his head and blew. They laughed together and rose and came to him, and Prodd thumped his shoulder and Mrs Prodd kissed his cheek.
       Something twisted inside him. His eyes rolled up until, for a moment, only the whites showed. The frozen grief he carried slumped and flooded him. This wasn’t the call, the contact, the exchange he had experienced with