Her face showed no sign of having heard Pompeii. It was a face that had lost its childlike softness and was beginning to fold within its fragile features a harshness that belied the lyric lines of its contours. The eyes, blue and always somewhat downcast, possessed a sullen quality. Even though the boy could not see them, he knew they were clouded by distance. He was never sure they fully took him in.

Pompeii called again, ``Laura!'' But the only answer that reached him was the screeching of the porch rail from her leg moving against it.

``She's in a mood,'' he thought ``There's not a month she doesn't get herself in a mood.''

Well, what did that matter when the sun was shining and there were dreams to dream about? And as for his pipe, if he wanted to smoke one, nobody would stop him. Not even Laura.

Suddenly he was interrupted in his daydreaming by a warm wetness lapping against his chin, and his eyes opened wide and long at the sight of a goat's claret tongue, feasting against the salt taste of him. Above the tongue, an aged yellow eye, sallow and time-cast, encrusted within a sphere of marbleized pink skin, stared unfalteringly at him.

``Christ sake, goat, git!'' But the goat would not.

``You're boiling milk, ain't you?'' soothing it with his hand, knowing the whiskered jowls and the swollen smoothness of teats that wrinkled expectantly to his touch. Pompeii rolled over. His head undulated gradually, covering space, to come straining beneath the taut belly within the warmth of those teats. With his mouth opened wide, he squirted the warm white milk against the roof of his mouth and his tongue savored the light, earthy taste of it. The boy's fingers and mouth operated with the skilled unity of a bagpipe player, pressing and pulling, delighting in what he did.