Later on, the children told her further about somersaulting. ``It must be awfully good for them. And awfully kind of Arlene,'' she told us later. ``But do you know something curious?'' she added. ``I reached into that funny little pocket that is high up on my dress. I have no notion why I reached. And I found a radish. Was it an omen? I thought for a second. But I would not pamper myself in that silly way. I opened the window and threw the radish out.''

Then, my mother blushed at this small lie; for she knew and we knew that it was cowardice that had made one more radish that night just too impossible a strain.

Arlene became indispensable; nobody could have told why. But she was. It was in the air.

A friend of my father's came to dinner. He was passing through town and phoned to say hello. As a result, he was persuaded out to dinner. As a matter of fact, this happened every four or five months. Sometimes, he coincided with my father's being at home. Sometimes, as at this juncture, he did not. But he was always persuaded out.

he liked children, in a loathsome kind of way; the two youngest in our family always had to be brought in and put through tricks for his entertainment. When he had left, I could never remember whether he had poked them in their middles, laughingly, with a thick index finger or whether he was merely so much the sort of person who did this that one assumed the action, not bothering to look. The children loathed him, too.