The builder had intended a storeroom off the kitchen, with no heat and one narrow window, where Gideon Hibbs in these days wrestled with Ben and Reuben across the rackety battlefield of the classics. When the boys came to Roxbury John Kenny, in a genial phase of turning things upside down, had hired a mason to build a fireplace in this austere chamber, and had purchased a magisterial new desk and high-backed chair for Mr. Hibbs. Then with his own hands he fetched from the attic two small old desks, trusting only Ben to help him worry them downstairs, and grew dreamy at the marred and squeaky things, chuckling over jokes superseded forty-odd years before.

In the house of the Reverend Mr. Elias Kenny of Boston, these desks had sustained the squirmings of John Kenny and his brother George, whose young hands left a network of schoolboy carvings now black with age. The satiny pine held room for Reuben and Ben to add a number of their own: arrows, circles, cabalistic squiggles; on Ben's a rising sun with a questioning eyebrow, on Reuben's a portrait of Mr. Eccles that did scant justice to his second-best ear.

One other chair stood at the rear of the schoolroom, sacred to occasions when Uncle John strolled in to listen, owl-tufts cocked like secondary ears alert for a false quantity. At such times Mr. Hibbs became grave and slow-spoken. Hibbs was not an obsequious man: he merely found it important to satisfy Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury. It was at one of those times that Reuben witnessed Uncle John's discovery of the new carvings, a pale crinkled hand descending to the desk, groping at B—R newly incised. Reuben saw only the hand, fearing to look up lest he find Uncle John sad or annoyed. After all the desk was a chip of history; having served John Kenny when he was a boy of twelve, it must have been made at least as early as 1649, and from a pine tree that would have sprung up in the wilderness before the planting of Plymouth Colony. The blue-veined hand lingered feather-light, restless like that of a blind man encountering something formidably new in the pattern of the known. Then it rose and passed gently through Reuben's hair, and the door of the schoolroom closed.

This Thursday morning spring was assailing the house with lazy reminders, a ripple of breeze at the window Mr. Hibbs had sternly closed, a muted hammering from the shed where Rob Grimes was mending a chicken coop at great leisure; earlier Reuben had heard the lonesome Sundayish clamor of the meeting-house bell nearly a mile away, warning that Thursday was Lecture Day, when decent citizens take thought for their souls.

"Very well, Reuben." Mr. Hibbs sniffed. "Lines twenty-one and twenty-two, and pray note that you are not to stress the caesura in line twenty-two, seeing there is no break in the thought."

"What's the matter? Are you considering, Mr. Cory, whether the caesura be intended by the poet to indicate a pause for daydreaming?"

"You have the quantities correct, and may now construe."

"'Why should Daedalus have——'"

"'Should'? 'Should'? I see no subjunctive, Mr. Cory."

"I was construing freely, sir."

"Why?"

"I thought it sounded smoother so, in English."

"Fiddle! Fuit, not being subjunctive, cannot be so translated."

"'Why was it that Daedalus safely moved his wings——'"

"Mr. Cory, one light fugitive moment if you please. Concerning the word tutas: is this an adverb?"

"No, sir."

"If Ovid had wished an adverb he would have written——?"

"Tuto, sir."

"Yet he used this strange word tutas, which is——?"

"An adjective, sir. Tutas, -a, -um, meaning 'safe.'"

"Light breaks." Mr. Hibbs filled his clay pipe, deliberately maddening his tortured nose. "The source, incidentally, of a dreadful English word, 'tutor'—I suppose from some woeful misguided conceit to the effect that a tutor can hold his charges in safety, Master Reuben, from the perils of error—wharrmphsh!—within and without. An adjective, then, and plural, I presume. The case, Mr. Cory?"

"Objective, Mr. Hibbs."

"Could it by any remote chance agree with—hm——"

"It agrees with alas, sir."

"Oh! How we do see eye to eye at times! Tutas alas. I could even imagine it meant 'safe wings,' 'uninjured wings,' something like that, if an adverb had not gone flying past my aging benighted head. Now concerning this word agitaret. Did I hear you translate it as 'moved'?"

"I did, sir."

"Had you considered the word 'agitate'?—excellent, I should have thought, and taken direct from the mother Latin."

"I did, sir, but the present-day meaning seemed unsatisfactory."

"Why?"

Reuben discovered he had pulled down his underlip. Mr. Hibbs had striven for three years to break him of the habit, but Reuben, as now, was often unaware he had done it until it was too late. He let it back gently without the usual comforting pop. "To me," Reuben said, "the word 'agitate' suggested fluttering. I might translate: 'Why was it that Daedalus fluttered safe wings?'" He glanced up, honestly feeling as apologetic as a puppy caught in flagrante with a ravished shoe. "To me, sir, Daedalus was no butterfly."

Ben knocked his Ovid on the floor and scrambled after it. Reuben guessed he was trying to divert the lightning, but Mr. Hibbs paid the uproar no heed at all, staring at Reuben with a twitching nose. You could never quite predict Gideon Hibbs: the next moment might be hell, or sudden sunshine, or merely another sneeze.

It was sunshine. Mr. Hibbs relaxed, a wrestler overcome, and laughed, a large generous bray. "You have a point, Reuben. Oh yes!" He fumbled for a kerchief and blew the inflamed organ mightily. "Well, but I'm not content with so flat a word as 'moved.' Benjamin? Considering the wriggles you perform at your desk (and I declare only a young backside could endure it) you ought to be able to offer some word conveying the sense of a sustained and powerful motion."

Shining with relief, Ben said: "'Plied'?"

"Why, excellent!" Mr. Hibbs tensed in astonishment. "'Why was it Daedalus plied uninjured wings?'—mph, comes out in English as iambic pentameter, bless me if it doesn't. Satisfactory, Reuben?"

"Yes, sir, I like that. 'Why was it Daedalus plied uninjured wings, but Icarus marks with his name the enormous waves?'"

Out of a suspended hush, Mr. Hibbs sighed. "Benjamin, proceed. If possible, without butterflies. Let us leave the butterflies to Reuben."

Reuben thought with care: He means no harm by that, none at all.... His eyes idly compelled the carved B—R to grow immense and blurred, and he listened to Ben's voice:

"Quantities correct, Benjamin. Construe."

"'Surely it was because Icarus flew high, and Daedalus lower; for both wore wings that were not their own.'"

"Eh, Benjamin, doing uncommon well today. High time of course—I am not prepared to consider this the millennium." Mr. Hibbs could seldom bear to leave a compliment undiluted. "Well, gentlemen, I suggest to you, these particular lines are something more than an exercise in grammar and prosody. I think, no more of the Tristia today. Your grammars if you please—this afternoon it shall be Cicero of course."

"Sir"—startled, Reuben saw his brother rising, not quite knocking over his little desk—"sir, may I ask a favor?"

Mr. Hibbs' lank features froze, but not completely. "Yes, my boy?"

"Last night, sir, I wrote out a translation of the lines in De Finibus that you assigned us for this afternoon. I—wished to know if I could do so without aid. I mean, sir—Ru hath helped me often at other times, being swifter at these things, so I—so I didn't tell him of it. And if it be satisfactory, Mr. Hibbs, may I go to Boston this afternoon?"

Mr. Hibbs stared at the paper Ben handed him, like a man hit by a chunk of firewood. "Done without aid, ha?"

"It was, sir. I even waited till Ru was asleep, for fear I'd give up and ask him for help after all."

Reuben gazed deeply into the swirling black midgets that had been the text of Ovid; he instructed himself: It doesn't matter. It does not matter. Seeing that he will go—

"No objection," Mr. Hibbs was saying vacantly—"no objection to the two of you helping each other: I expect it and you profit by it, but I can see, I understand, Benjamin, I—uh—commend your industry and the sentiment that must have prompted it." His voice trailed away under the threat of another sneeze, and Reuben knew that he must speak.

"It's quite true, Mr. Hibbs. I knew nothing of it till just now." Was that good enough? Did I snarl, or squeak?...

"Of course. This translation is—not bad, Benjamin. Some errors, but nothing that cannot be caught up—uh—tomorrow. I'm assuming your great-uncle hath nothing against it, or you would mention it, being"—the sneeze arrived and passed on—"being an honorable boy. Yes, you may have the afternoon. No precedent, of course."

"I understand that, sir, and thank you."

There was grammar, there was logic, there were Greek verbs, there was in the air a warm premonition of luncheon. Mr. Hibbs tucked his books under his arm and marched upstairs, where he would allow himself a five-minute meditation before the meal. He was willing to explain this exercise without embarrassment. It was not the same as prayer, but a contemplation of nothing, a device for clearing his mind of trivia in the hope of perceiving a moment of truth.... "Ru, why don't you come too? You could easy catch up the work if he gives you the afternoon, and he would—for all his barking you know you can twist him any way you please."

"No, bub," said Reuben lightly—but he was afraid to look up from his desk at the puzzled kindness he knew he would see. "There'll be a tag end of the afternoon when Pontifex hath done his worst, and I—wish to do something else."

"Something else?"

"Oh, I—nothing too important."

Ben looked hurt. "About the Cicero—haven't I leaned on thee too much, Ru? I never did think to wound thee, doing that."

"I'm not wounded! I"—careful, Ru Cory!—"I commend your industry."

"Ru!"

"I'm sorry. About this afternoon—you remember Mr. Welland?"

"Welland? Oh, the doctor?"

"Yes, I—he knows so much—I met him by chance the other day, when you was in Boston——"

It was no use. What had seemed clear a little while ago, a lamp in a parting of the mist, was now once more submerged in fog, and Reuben lost his way in a tangle of half-exasperated words, trying to reassure Ben that a wish to see Mr. Welland had nothing whatever to do with being ill.

Older and neater than neighboring houses, the Jenks house was shielded from them by a coach house, and on the other side by a small fenced-in garden. Such aloofness would not save it if flames like those of 1679 or '91 ever raged into this western quarter of the city, where many still owned the forbidden wood-framed chimneys and hoped for the best. Fires in the past had usually started near the docks. That might be the reason why Captain Jenks wished to keep the breadth of the town between him and the ships that were his daily bread.

Approaching the house, Ben had been sharply aware of second-floor windows, feeling eyes in a way remarkably like fright if only it weren't absurd to be frightened at calling on a girl. Now he held back his hand from the knocker, studying the garden with unstable dignity, suppressing a hope that nobody was at home. He admired the grape arbor, enlivened already by a white and brown of buds, and noted here and there the brave glow of daffodils. Flagstone walks suggested a trust in permanence.

He remembered other doorways, how they had stood between him and the unknown. Three years ago one had opened, himself and Reuben standing in rags on the threshold and unable to speak at all to the face with owl-tufts, for John Kenny had answered the door himself, looking down his nose. "To what have I the honor—oh, my soul! Your mother's look, the both of you—come in out of the cold!" Not until hours later, when they were washed and fed and settled in the room where they now lived, did John Kenny speak of his sister's letter announcing their tragic death in the jaws of the beast, a passing hard example of the infinite wisdom of God. He had answered the letter, he said, with the proper sentiments. Very much later, weeks later, Mr. Kenny's own conscience moved him to write another letter even more stately, explaining that the boys appeared to be abundantly alive and would remain with him until of man's years. This letter was never answered by Rachel Cory; after three years, it seemed unlikely that it ever would be. That doorway had opened on years of change, as all years are, but Ben held a private notion that the century really turned then, in March of 1704: for himself and Reuben an end to flame and trouble except for whatever stirred within—and this only natural, since any boy or man is a volcano with a thin crust and knows it.

Ben sounded the knocker. Now he must remember to take off his hat after the door opened, not before—supposing it ever did.

It opened. In Puritan gray and white, she of the brown face was regarding him with amiable recognition. Ben had started to claw his hat at the first rattle of the latch; he checked that, and was now able to remove it, not gracefully but at least without dropping it on her shoes. All this the slave girl observed with calm, secure in cool gravity, a well-trained servant waiting for him to speak, but there could be no doubt about that flash of welcome. "Mistress Faith Jenks—is she at home?" He spoke so softly he could hardly hear the noise himself.

"I think so, sir." Again a sparkle shared, as if she had said aloud: "Of course she is, Ben Cory of Deerfield, but I must make a show of going to find out." In her actually spoken words Ben heard a puzzling foreign quality: the th was almost a t. "Will you come in, Mr. Cory, the while I inquire?" The foreign stress altered his name to something like Coree. But she did remember him, name and all.

Clarissa showed him through the entry—he knocked over no furniture—into a parlor dim with heavy drapes at the windows such as Ben had never seen. Mr. Kenny liked his windows casually plain to the world. Clarissa moved to the drapes with the grace of a wild being incapable of clumsiness. She said: "Let's have more light."

"Thank you," Ben said. She glanced at him quickly, startled maybe by the thanks, then flung the cloth open and lingered briefly, a golden hand raised to the drapery, the round of her cheek lovable in the sun.

Ben realized he was rudely staring, in a sudden loss of blindness. He automatically damned himself for shameful thoughts—he came here to call respectfully on Faith Jenks!—not to yearn and lust after a slave wench who doubtless owned not even a last name. In his confusion he could no longer look at Clarissa. He heard her murmur some pleasant word about sitting down and making himself at ease. She was gone, and the room cold.

Clarissa's hand—now Ben could not even scold himself. He could not escape the sweetness of a golden hand, pink-palmed, shining in sunlight as a part of sunlight.

Seated and short of breath he tried furtively to clean an over-looked fingernail with a thumbnail, an operation tinged with futility. On the wall a sampler confronted him, not very well made—Kate would have sniffed—asserting: And thine ears shall hear a voice behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isaiah, xxx; 21. Ben Cory ventured a modest alteration in the angle of his chair.

He remembered he did not know the religion of the Jenks family; had stupidly failed to inquire about it of Uncle John. What if Faith were strongly devout?—it was likely. What if she discovered with shock that he had not seen the inside of a meeting-house since coming to Roxbury?... He fretted at the fingernail, borrowing trouble. Could a man dissemble, hiding essential doubts from a woman if he loved her? Shabby bargain: for my pretense, your love. He gave up the fingernail as a lost cause, and begged the moral dilemma to go away a while.

Slowly, as it may dawn on a wanderer in the forest that he is under examination from a thicket by the feral unconciliating eyes of a Something—bear, catamount, Indian, he doesn't know, doesn't exactly wish to know—so it dawned on Ben that he was being studied from the hallway, in perfect silence, by a square lump of girl and a smaller lump of yellowish dog.

Following her inclinations, the mother of Charity's dog might have conceived and born a spaniel, but she must have been tempted by the Devil in the shape of a terrier. The snuff-colored result had been amended by years of overeating into a hairy sausage too close to the floor. His silky ears were tolerable spaniel, his eyes all spaniel in foolish sadness, blurred in the iris like some old human eyes. When Ben smiled, a wag disturbed the squirrely tail; he shambled up to analyze the smell of Ben's feet and pronounce it fair. Charity nodded. "He worships you. I foresaw it plain. Most uncommon for Sultan to worship anyone."

Ben studied Sultan in some alarm. He was lying on Ben's shoes, true, but it looked more like sleep than worship. "Often he growls with menace"—Charity approached, awkward in a shapeless brown frock that did her no good—"the which he was prepared to do when we ambushed you."

"I'd've gone straight up in the air. A perfect ambush."

Charity planted her feet far apart and hid her hands behind her back. "Did you play Inj'an when you was young?"

"Oh, I did, Mistress Charity, my brother and I. Used to sneak off to the woods where we were forbidden to go, which was wrong of us."

"Why?"

"The woods were dangerous—real Inj'ans."

"I've seen real ones—not wild, though." She came nearer, not by walking but by a side-to-side evolution of spread feet, carrying her like a statue on small wheels. "Christian Indians, talked English all piggedy-gulp."

"I remember an old Indian at Deerfield, supposed to be a Christian. A Pocumtuck. Wore a cast-off bodice for a breechclout, and was alway——" Ben remembered the failing of Captain Jenks—"was alway a little foolish."

"Faith is dressing her hair different, the which you're obliged to notice or she'll be in a taking, the which I think is poo."

"I'll be sure to notice it, Mistress Charity."

"Be you"—Charity jerked her head; upstairs Ben could hear a muted ripple of women's voices—"in love with her?"

Ben evaded. "Charity, I've met her but the once."

No good. "I thought a person alway knew."

"Oh—maybe they do and I'm just foolish."

"I guess you are, but very wonderful."

Maneuvered thus against a lee shore with the broadside raking him from bow to stern, Ben mumbled: "'Deed I'm not."

"Not poo," said Charity, sinking him....

"Do you go often to church, Mistress Charity?"

"We're Church of England."

"Oh, so was my mother."

"Then a'n't you too?"

"Well—my father was not a member of the congregation at Deerfield, and my Uncle John is not a churchgoer, nor—nor am I."

"Um. Thought everyone was obliged to go."

"My Uncle John says it was so, years past. Now, if everyone went there wouldn't be meeting-houses to hold 'em.... Do you like going?"

"Mr. Binyon was very wonderful."

"He is—no longer with you?"

Charity shook her head and sighed. "I do treasure his memory. He thundered, as with the voice of many waters."

"He—uh—died?"

"Nay, he went back to England. Later they said his steps went down unto the—that is, he joined—well, somebody. I don't just know. Mr. Mitching is not wonderful. He whuffles. In fact he is...."

"Poo?"

Charity came quite close, and seemed perilously near to smiling. "You said that—but I'll never tell. Nay, I do hold in my heart many things that Mr. Binyon—thundered—but mustn't speak of him, and yet I do sometimes, because everyone says I own the nature of a heedless brat."

"I don't say so."

"You are different. Mr. Binyon spoke as with the voice of angels. Somebody said he was forty—he didn't look so terrible old.... Were all your people killed at Deerfield, Mr. Cory?"

"My father and mother. My brother escaped, with me. He's fifteen now, and I'm seventeen. And you?"

"Thirteen in May. A sad time—nobody will ever listen."

"You don't mean you're going to be thirteen forever?"

"Do not be poo...."

"He's a much better student than I, Reuben is."

"I can read, by the way.... Was your mother very beautiful?"

"Why—yes, Charity, she was. Everyone should be able to read."

"I thought so because you are beautiful."

"Now, Charity! You ought not——"

"I know. Alway, everything wrong."

"Not that, but—oh, never mind.... What do you like to read?"

"Not romances. Faith reads those, by the way."

"I've read but a few." In Mr. Kenny's helter-skelter library, Ben had had a glimpse of Aphra Behn and her long-winded imitators; he had rather enjoyed the swashbuckling of Oroonoko. "Our tutor keeps us so hard pressed with the classics we can't read much else."

"Um ... Mr. Cory, is it true that swallows spend the winter at the bottom of frozen ponds and streams all naked of any feathers?"

"Nay, I've heard that but don't believe it. They must go south like so many others and return in the spring."

"Um. All the same I drew a picture of some of them under the water all naked of any feathers, and another on the brink—he hath just risen and put his feathers on again." She gulped and stuck out a blunt jaw. "I draw many pictures, when I ought to be sewing. I like cooking if I can cook what I like."

"But sewing is poo?"

"You too would think so, had you been obliged to do it. Would you wish to behold the picture I made of swallows under the water all naked of any feathers and one on the brink?"

"Yes, I would, Charity."

She whirled like a doll on a revolving pole and marched away. Sultan moaned and followed, a slave to duty with a backward glance of apology.

Ben heard other footsteps and rose, too soon, and bowed—too soon, so that he was bent in the middle when Faith entered, grave and shining and young, preceded by the bulk of Madam Prudence Jenks, who clearly did not expect a hand to be kissed or shaken but held both pale things curled below the twin billows of her bosom and entered the room thus, rather like an angel looking for breakfast, and allowed Faith to help her into a chair, and loomed in it, rather like an angel disappointed but willing to wait. "'Tis most agreeable of you, Mr. Carey, to call upon us in our simple afflicted seclusion."

Uncle John hadn't mentioned that the Jenks family was secluded, afflicted, or simple. The drowned gaze of Madam Jenks suggested she had risen from a rest of ages under water, for the purpose (imposed on her by others) of viewing Benjamin Cory; if he proved not too detestably in need of correction, she might submerge. Ben mumbled how happy he was to meet her. For all their damp opacity, her prominent eyes were not at all blind.

Faith's gold-brown hair lay in soft spirals above her ears; on the coils rested a cap, no such cap as Puritan custom approved but a trifle of frivolous lace—the Mathers would have hated it as one of the stigmata of popery. Her dress today was dead-leaf brown. To Ben it looked uncomplicated and demure, its very plainness encouraging the eye to rejoice in what it held. Surely she could never become gross and overblown, the damask fading to an underwater bleach, dugs swollen to down pillows!

"How charmingly you've done your hair, Mistress Faith!"

"Oh, la, thank you, sir—I merely toss it together so to have it out of the way." (And thank you, Charity!) Hands chastely folded, Faith watched him with unmistakable radiance; as Ben dared to meet her eyes she blinked both of them. Ben's heart floated over shining fields. He must have said the right thing. In fact, as matters looked now he could perfectly well sit down; it might even be expected of him.

With larger sternness Madam Jenks repeated: "Most kind of you to call, Mr. Carey, seeing we have not been much about since our loss, the which one must suffer with fortitude required of us by the Lord in his infinite mercy, very kind of you." A parchment contraption appeared magically in her hand; she fanned the pallid orb of her face in a motion grave and hypnotic.

Faith patted her mother's arm where folds of baby-creases narrowed to a tiny wrist. "Mama, I think Mr. Cory never met Uncle James." Faith's charming double wink instructed Ben not to be even slightly dismayed by sudden Uncle James: she would see him through.

A red enameled comb projected from Madam Jenks' tight-bound hair like the comb of a hen, bobbing so unstably that Ben's anxiety climbed notch after notch. "He did not know James?" Madam Jenks shook her head, but nothing happened. "A pity, seeing he was ever a worthy influence to young and old and would have profited much by knowing him, but God disposes." Pronouns, Ben noted, counted for no more than ripples, to be brushed aside by the lady under full sail. Solidly abeam of him, cutting his wind and threatening to broach him just when he was trying to claw off to windward, she seemed to be conveying a message: that Benjamin Cory or Carey must have found it extraordinary difficult to maintain the Christian virtues with no assistance from Uncle James.

"My father's brother-in-law," Faith interpreted. "He died last year, Mr. Cory. Mamma thought you might have met him."

"Hadn't the honor, ma'am. I'm sorry to learn of your affliction."

"He resteth in the Lord," said the fat woman, and beamed. "Lived in Cambridge. I trust your grandfather is well?"

"Yes, ma'am, very well these days." (What was the use?)

"I join you, Mr. Carey, in praising, for that mercy, the Dispenser of All Things." Madam Jenks went on to pronounce the weather changeable; Ben agreed; Faith expressed intelligent neutrality. Small silence spread like a blot of ink.... "I understand you intend going to the college this year, Mr. Carey?"

"Yes, ma'am, my brother and I."

"Preparing for the ministry, I presume?"

"Neither of us would appear to have the call, Madam Jenks."

"Indeed.... Do you enjoy the Boston air?"

"I don't think I've ever heard it, ma'am."

"Your pardon, sir?"

"Nay, I—beg your pardon—I must have misunderstood."

"My inquiry was in reference to the Boston air. Do you enjoy it?"

"Oh, very much...."

By some transition which Ben heard but didn't understand—the instant of kaleidoscopic shift was blurred for him by a gleam of merriment in Faith—Madam Jenks was comparing cats and dogs. "'Tis true a cat is a tidy beast and of value if she be a good mouser, but one can feel no affection for them."

"Why," said Ben, "our big yellow cat——"

"They are treacherous," said Madam Jenks. The comb was rising. "Now a dog is a faithful animal instant ever to his master's needs, for it would appear the Lord hath prepared him for the service of man, and I am trying, Faith, to recall the name of a small dog Mr. Jenks owned, you must remember: I mean the one that was two before Sultan, or was it three?—with a white ear."

"You must be thinking of Prince, Mama."

"No, my dear, seeing that Prince was the one that fell down the well, and Goodman Jennison spent the better part of a forenoon attempting to rescue the poor brute and had no white ear to be sure."

"Rags?"

"Faith, Rags was black, and was given to us by Mr. Riggs when his good wife was taken to the Lord, and was obliged for business reasons to go to Newport for some weeks, and certainly had no white ear, and was indeed rather ill-natured, in fact we were obliged to give him away, since he did not return from Newport until some damage had already been done to Goody Jennison's herb garden, the which I regret."

Ben wondered how long Charity had been standing in the hallway, a paper clasped to her square breast and Sultan lying on her shoes. She might have been waiting for Ben to smile, since when he did she dislodged the dog with a backward step and brought him the paper, ignoring her elders.

"My word, Charity!" Faith spoke kindly. "Mr. Cory doesn't wish to look at pictures."

"He told me he did," said Charity flatly, and laid the paper on Ben's knee, leaning close. "This be the one with feathers restored."

"Oh, I see." Confusedly, Ben saw more than that. It had never occurred to him that lines of ink on paper could move and sing. A stream glittered with fragmented ice. Ben could feel the vulnerable pride of the swallow twitching a pert forked tail, tilting a round head toward distant cloud. And how should Charity have made him actually hear the slow yielding of a brook to the coming of spring? Those naked things huddled under the water—swallows maybe, or squirming babies, ambiguous, blind. The eye clung to them, not in laughter.

"Charity," said Madam Jenks, "I believe Mr. Carey would prefer to look at pictures another time."

Charity tried to ignore that. In nearness she was all little-girl softness and warmth, electric. Little?—thirteen.

"Charity," said Madam Jenks, "go and aid Clarissa with the refreshments. You should have remembered it before."

Ben blurted: "Charity, this is beautiful."

"Charity," said Madam Jenks.

Charity inhaled carefully. "Very well, Mama, I will leave the room."

The red comb popped. Ben had been half-prepared for that, and for the deferential scramble he now performed. Under cover of the commotion Charity vanished with the picture, Sultan gloomily following.

"Thankful heart!" The comb restored, Madam Jenks fanned herself. "Ah well, a difficult time of life I suppose. You have no idea, Mr. Carey, the hours of grief and dismay, I have sought guidance on my knees, the which she'll be the death of me yet considering the palpitations of my heart, nevertheless when the Lord calls me to my long home I shall certainly go."

"Mama!" Faith murmured. "I'm sure in a few years she'll learn poise and manners. 'Tis only a passing thing. Why, when I was her age I'm sure I was difficult too."

"Nay, my darling, never intractable, never strange, alway a consolation to me. Faith is my great comfort, Mr. Carey, you've no idea."

"I'm sorry she plagued you, Mr. Cory."

"But—truly she didn't. Anyway, that picture—"

"Art," said Madam Jenks sadly. "When I think how Mr. Jenks and I have striven to teach her womanly ways, and all to no purpose, and then such dreadful passion if she be crossed in the lightest particular, even in these trivial childish notions of art, the which she could not have got it from Mr. Jenks or myself, good heavens!"

Charity said from the doorway: "I heard that." Sultan had given up trying to sleep; he leaned against her leg and whined.

"Oh, Charity, Charity—I suppose you never even went near the kitchen to help Clarissa."

Charity's square face had gone dull red to the eyelids. "She said she had no need of me. Mama, I brought that picture to Mr. Cory because he did ask to see it."

The red comb popped. Ben gathered it up again, but could not immediately return it, for Madam Jenks needed all her powers for speech. "I should have supposed, Charity, that at your years you might have acquired some trace of manners if not of gratitude, the which I do not ask although a child of thirteen is certainly capable, and never no unjust correction nor harsh words if not wholly yielded up to depravity, the which——"

"Mama, I am becoming exceedingly wrathful."

"Charity," said Madam Jenks, "we will not have one of your Times. I forbid it. Go to your room, after all the effort your father and I have made, and that continually."

"Don't you bring Papa into it and him lying up there dead to the world!"

"Charity!" That was Faith, rising, then kneeling quickly by her mother, whose round face had gone gray as ash.

"I will go away forever," said Charity in a sudden loud rage of tears. "Even as Mr. Binyon. I tell you my steps will go down unto the Whore of Babylon!"

"Reuben, I've thought occasionally that the game hath something in common with the course of living. The opening—that's a preparation like youth, and I alway thought, if a chess player might truly understand the opening no other player could defeat him—a'n't that so? Still, it is too complex, the possibilities too near to infinite, for any mind to hold 'em all, and so the best of players will inevitably fumble the opening, at least a little, missing some bright opportunities, the result a compromise with what might have been. Then the middle game—action, struggle, changes of fortune, more opportunities lost, and a few fairly grasped at the just moment."

"I believe I like that, Mr. Welland. And the end game?"

"The end game, if one may arrive at it—some die young, you know, some from a Fool's Mate, or blind chance may overset the board—but if one may arrive—oh dear! Oh dear me! That knight, through my poor wall of pawns—dare say it's all up with me. I will try this. What next?"

"This, sir. You left a hole for my Bishop too."

"So, for my sins, I did. Brrr!... Well, this."

"Check!"

"Blast!... If one may arrive at the end game—as I certainly can't here, my friend—'tis not unlike old age, a time demanding some coolness and precision and the summary of the ending, which is no simple matter of victory or defeat or draw, I think."

"I like the simile, but I'm not sure living is a game."

"It is not, Reuben. I'm pleased you find the flaw. It will remind you that any simile is a mischancy nag to ride. Ride him easy, perhaps for entertainment only, and be ready to jump off before he blunders into the ditch on the left which is marked reductio ad absurdum. If I said, however, that living is a journey, would that be a simile?"

"No, sir, I call that a fair description, no flight of rhetoric."

"Mm-yas.... Let's see what remains for me here. I will try what the poor Pawn can do, creeping into the breach, but I fear little David hath here no slingshot."

"Well.... Well, I'm afraid he did leave it at home, Mr. Welland, for this is checkmate."

"Ow!"

"Ben would say I had scuttled him, nautical language being ever on his lips these days. He plays carelessly—in chess, I mean. And in living, with the carelessness of generosity. But he'll win his end game."

"So much of what you say this afternoon ends with Ben! He's very close to your heart, is he not?"

"Oh, we—were alway close."

"And went through much trouble together, I know, which it would seem hath strengthened the tie, but with those of a different nature it might have done the opposite. I had two brothers, Reuben. We drifted apart, as they say—one lives now in England, the other died some years ago. After childhood we were—oh, let us say like friends, but with strangely little to say to one another. Cherish what you have—devotion is not quite the commonest thing in the world."

"This noon, sir, I tried to tell him something. It should have been a simple thing to say, but I lost myself in a most wonderful tangle of misunderstanding—yes, and finally gave it up like a fool, though later I thought of a dozen different ways I might have said it plainly."

"Mm-yas—a little strange. You speak clearly to me, as clearly as anyone I can recall meeting, of any age."

"Well—well, I told him I intended coming here, and he at once supposed that I thought I was ill, and then in reassuring him that it was nothing like that, I somehow lost track of what I had meant to say, which was—which was, sir, that one of my reasons in coming was to tell you that I wish I might study medicine. Or at least hear whatever you might tell me of such an ambition."

"Oh.... That was only one reason, Reuben?"

"Only one of—of many."

"Continue, Reuben."

"I'm confused about many things."

"So am I. But it's a good reason, seeing two candles are a trifle brighter than one."

"And you said to me that you and I ought to be friends."