For instance, I missed a hell of a lot of good stuff this summer. Frankly, though, I don’t mind at all. Because I’ve definitely noticed that when people are sore at somebody else, or they’re miserable, or they’ve got some kind of a gripe, then they have this tendency to say more interesting stuff. Take this summer for instance, Annabel’s been going around making potato salad and singing songs in the kitchen and making excuses for people. This stuff is not any too interesting to put down. I’m crazy about it and all, but it sort of goes in and out of my ears without making much of a dent. She says all these nice things about everybody, and about the weather and the flowers. And not phony either, because she means it, and is not half as nervous any more either. I think it’s because Reason A, she’s gotten over the change of life, and Reason B, Berry-berry’s around all the time. Plus Echo. Also, she’s been doing quite a bit of praying. Every now and then I catch her at it. I see her at the side of her bed, kneeling down and all, and my own personal hunch is that she’s praying about Berry-berry and Echo. I get the feeling that Annabel thinks if she holds her breath long enough and keeps praying a lot, the two of them will get married and have about twenty kids. Which I personally wouldn’t mind at all either, because it’s quite nerve-racking to just wonder about it all the time, I mean about whether or not you’re going to have all these nephews and nieces and sister-in-laws living about a block away. Personally, I wouldn’t mind it at all, a whole neighborhood full of little kids I’d be the uncle of, and pretty soon I’d have about forty of them around my neck, wanting to horn in on everything and be taken places and bought things for. They’d probably drive me out of my head and keep me broke half the time, but frankly, I wouldn’t mind it too much. It’s just that at the moment there’s quite a bit of suspense about the whole thing. The way they’re going at it, I mean Berry-berry and Echo, the way they’re doing is like there’s no tomorrow. They’re always getting in and out of cars, or flying hell-bent up the street, or running into the house to change clothes and eat and fly back out again. It’s nerve-racking as hell. What I’d like is to be sliced right down the middle and have half of me sewed on to Echo and the other half sewed on to Berry-berry, and then when they were flying in and out of the place, and up the street a hundred miles an hour going Christ knows where, then I’d not only know where they were going and what they were doing, I’d be there, and doing it with them, and it still wouldn’t be like three’s a crowd, or anything.