When Clinton walked into the house late that afternoon, himself weak and feverish, he called up the stairs to Annabel: “Hey! I’m home! Annabel!” Then he sat on the floor, his duffel bag in his lap, and leaned against the doorframe.

Annabel rushed down the stairs in her petticoat, pulling a negligee about her shoulders. The first words she spoke to him were, “Clinton! What are you doing on the floor?”

“It’s hot,” he said.

“Where’s Berry-berry?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you see him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Then she took a good look at the boy and said, “Why, precious baby, you are peaked!” She knelt on the floor and gave him a fever test: by pressing her lips against his forehead, she reckoned his temperature to be high enough for concern. “Straight to bed!” she commanded.

As she helped him out of his clothes, Annabel asked what sort of food he’d been eating.

“I ran out of crackers,” he said.

“Why crackers? Didn’t you have money?”

“Cheese crackers.”

“What’s wrong with you, Clinton?”

“I said I ran out of crackers.”

“Look here, Mister traveler, I will not tolerate insolence. Fever or no fever. Now get into this bed and tell me all about your brother.”

“He fell out of the tree.”

“He what?”

“He was eight years old, that’s all. Ker-plunk!”

Suddenly his teeth were chattering and he complained of the cold. Annabel soon realized he was delirious. She covered him with blankets and telephoned the doctor.

Dr. Bolz came to the house that afternoon. He was a frail and diminutive man who, in repose, seemed to be a creature of exceptional elegance and grace; but the fact was that he was indescribably clumsy. He seemed always to be tripping over his own feet and dropping things. The Williamses always referred to him privately as Dr. Butter-fingers; but in spite of this alarming personal trait, Annabel had perfect faith in his competence as a physician.

He was not a stammerer but he spoke haltingly and in sentences that had no definite endings to them; so that when he gave a diagnosis, one had to guess at its meaning. On this day Dr. Bolz left her with a vague impression that Clinton had contracted some insignificant summer malady called cat fever, which could be cured with plenty of blankets and the administering of his pills every four hours. But on the second day, he assured her that she had misunderstood his diagnosis: the patient had pneumonia. He told her to stop giving the pills altogether; instead, he injected into Clinton’s buttock a powerful new drug. On the fifth day of this new treatment, Dr. Bolz pronounced the patient cured. Clinton could get out of bed whenever he felt able; and it was the doctor’s professional opinion that Annabel might now safely question the boy about his trip.

Annabel’s curiosity had had too much time to grow in her. By now it had become a thing of unrecognizable proportions, a demon over whom her reason had no control whatever. When Clinton told her that Berry-berry had left Key Bonita by the time he himself had arrived, and that he, Clinton, had merely taken the next bus home—Annabel was not only disappointed but dissatisfied as well. She would not leave the subject alone.