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predict will be the nail in the coffin of our species—the one big, final event which will make all humankind disappear forever?”
    Mirabella frowned. “Well, it sounds to me like you aren’t coming, so I shouldn’t tell you anything , but of course I will because we’re friends. Reggie lists five different potential agents of permanent annihilation.”
    â€œPerhaps you should name them some other time, Mirabella,” said Molly, uneasily. “Mag and I are both late for work.”
    â€œThen I’ll walk with you. I should vacate this block anyway. The Salvationists are about to start caterwauling on that corner and they’ll drown me out completely.”
    Maggie and Molly resumed their brisk walk along Bush with Mirabella falling into skip-step next to them. “First. Water. Reggie calls this the Noachial model—whatever that means. Then. Fire. Either by the hand of nature or by the hand of man. Oh, let me see. Slow down, will you? Wind. Tornadoes, hurricanes—we’ve seen a good deal of that already. Then earthquake, volcano—that sort of thing. ‘Earth eructions,’ my horned-rimmed honey calls them.”
    â€œEarth e rup tions?” asked Molly.
    â€œNo. E ruc tions. Like big terrestrial belches. Isn’t my new husband clever? He’s such a wooz.”
    Maggie and Molly nodded as one, or rather like two kittens tracking a playfully dangled bit of twine with their whole heads.
    â€œAnyway, don’t we get a taste of that from time to time here in wambling ol’ Frisco? Oh, do slow down just a smidge. I’m going to trip, I really am. Thank you. And the last one—hum, what is the last one?”
    â€œYes,” sighed Maggie with only slightly masked annoyance, “what is the last one? Molly and I are dying to know.”
    â€œWell, if you’re going to be like that, I won’t tell you.”
    â€œMag was just having fun,” said Molly pacifically. “Please tell us the last one.”
    â€œYes, I remember it now. It’s the sun.”
    Maggie stopped. Her companions halted as well. Maggie glared at Mirabella. “You mean the human race could go extinct from too much sunshine? Would this apply to Eskimos and Santa Claus too?”
    â€œWell, what do you think causes droughts, for Heaven’s sake? Moonbeams ?”
    Maggie snorted. “Mirabella Hampton Prowse, you are a moonbeam. A true mooncalf.”
    â€œOf whom we are very, very fond,” Molly hastily put in. She reached over and demonstrated her fondness for her former grammar school desk-mate by giving her a little buss on the cheek. Then she seized Maggie by the arm and the two dashed off. “Very late!” Molly tossed back. “Love and kisses to you and the professor!”
    After Maggie and Molly had put themselves a good distance ahead of their gaped-mouth friend, they slowed their pace to a stroll. “I know it was mean to dash away like that,” repined Molly, “but I also knew if I didn’t do something , you were going to chew her up for breakfast. You were , weren’t you?”
    Maggie grinned and nodded. “But not breakfast. Dinner. A big plate of mooncalf’s liver.”

Chapter Three
Zenith, Winnemac, U.S.A., July 1923
(from Five Saints, Five Sinners, by Gail Lowery)
    Since the two of them seemed, at least for the time being, to be getting along, Molly wanted so badly to speak to Maggie about the marriage proposal, and how, should Mrs. Barton accept it, a union between their two parents might redound to the benefit of all concerned. But she kept her ongoing promise to her father and scrupulously avoided the topic. Instead, the two friends, as they strode past the solid brick mansions and quaint wood-frame houses of oak-lined Ninth Street, turned their conversation to the day that lay ahead, one greatly anticipated by Maggie and Molly and their three circle-sisters.
    The woman for whom the