Mrs. Frobisher touched the control button that depolarized the window in the breakfast room, letting the morning sun stream in through the now transparent sheet of glass. Her attention was caught by something across the street, and she said, in a low voice, "Larry, come here."

Larry Frobisher looked up from his morning coffee. "What is it, hon?"

"The Stanton boys. Come look."

Frobisher sighed. "Who are the Stanton boys, and why should I come look?" But he got up and came over to the window.

"See—over there on the walkway toward the play area," his wife said.

"I see a boy pushing a wheeled contraption and three girls playing with a skip rope," Frobisher said. "Or do you mean that the Stanford boys are dressed up as girls?"

"Stanton," she corrected him. "They just moved into the apartment on the first floor."

"Who? The three girls?"

"No, silly! The two Stanton boys and their mother. One of them is in that 'wheeled contraption'. It's called a therapeutic chair."

"Oh? So the poor kid's been hurt. What's so interesting about that, aside from morbid curiosity?"

The boy pushing the chair went around a bend in the walkway, out of sight, and Frobisher went back to his coffee while his wife spoke.

"Their names are Mart and Bart," she said. "They're twins."

"I should think," Frobisher said, applying himself to his breakfast, "that the mother would get a self-powered chair for the boy instead of making the other boy push it."

"The poor boy can't control the chair, dear," said Mrs. Frobisher, still looking out the window after the vanished twins. "There's something wrong with his nervous system. I understand that he was exposed to some kind of radiation when he was only two years old. That's why the chair has to have all those funny instruments built into it. Even his heartbeat has to be controlled electronically."

"Shame," said Frobisher, spearing a bit of sausage. "Kind of rough on both of 'em, I'd guess."

"How do you mean, dear?"

"Well, I mean, like ... well, for instance, why are they going over to the play area? Play games, right? So the one that's well has got to push his brother over there. Can't just get out and go; has to take the brother along, too. Kind of a burden, see?"

Mrs. Frobisher turned away from the window. "Why, Larry! I'm surprised at you. Really! Don't you think the boy should take care of his brother?"

"Oh, now, honey, I didn't mean that. It's hard on both of 'em. The kid in the chair has to sit there and watch his brother play baseball or jai alai or whatever, while he can't do anything himself. Like I say, kind of rough on both of 'em."

"Well, yes, I suppose it must be. Want some more coffee?"

"Thanks, honey. And another slice of toast, hunh?"