she’s seen her. A pindling scrawny little thing, about ten years old. She leaves her alone all day.”

Ray encountered the Calhoun girl again, shortly after that, in the way encounters repeat themselves, once they have started.

“She didn’t say much but I guess her husband is a nit-wit. Funny how a smart girl like that always marries one of these sap-heads that can’t earn a living. She said she was working because she wanted her child to have the advantages she’d missed. That’s the way she put it.”

One heard the long-legged, melancholy child next door practising at the piano daily at four. Cora said it drove her crazy. But then, Cora was rarely home at four. “Well,” she said now, virtuously, “I don’t