We knew—or at least we were confident—that on May Day, when all the Sunday School picnics took place in the Alisal, the wild azaleas that grew in the skirts of the stream would be in bloom. They were a part of May Day.

May Day was cold. The picnic was drenched out of existence by a freezing rain, and there wasn’t an open blossom on the azalea trees. Two weeks later they still weren’t out.

Cal hadn’t known it would be like this when he had made azaleas the signal for his picnic, but once the symbol was set it could not be violated.

The Ford sat in Windham’s shed, its tires pumped up, and with two new dry cells to make it start easily on Bat. Lee was alerted to make sandwiches when the day came, and he got tired of waiting and stopped buying sandwich bread every two days.

“Why don’t you just go anyway?” he said.

“I can’t,” said Cal. “I said azaleas.”

“How will you know?”

“The Silacci boys live out there, and they come into school every day. They say it will be a week or ten days.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Lee. “Don’t overtrain your picnic.”

Adam’s health was slowly improving. The numbness was going from his hand. And he could read a little—a little more each day.

“It’s only when I get tired that the letters jump,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t get glasses to ruin my eyes. I knew my eyes were all right.”

Lee nodded and was glad. He had gone to San Francisco for the books he needed and had written for a number of separates. He knew about as much as was known about the anatomy of the brain and the symptoms and severities of lesion and thrombus. He had studied and asked questions with the same unwavering intensity as when he had trapped and pelted and cured a Hebrew verb. Dr. H. C. Murphy had got to know Lee very well and had gone from a professional impatience with a Chinese servant to a genuine admiration for a scholar. Dr. Murphy had even borrowed some of Lee’s news separates and reports on diagnosis and practice. He told Dr. Edwards, “That Chink knows more about the pathology of cerebral hemorrhage than I do, and I bet as much as you do.” He spoke with a kind of affectionate anger that this should be so. The medical profession is unconsciously irritated by lay knowledge.

When Lee reported Adam’s improvement he said, “It does seem to me that the absorption is continuing—”

“I had a patient,” Dr. Murphy said, and he told a hopeful story.

“I’m always afraid of recurrence,” said Lee.

“That you have to leave with the Almighty,” said Dr. Murphy. “We can’t patch an artery like an inner tube. By the way, how do you get him to let you take his blood pressure?”

“I bet on his and he bets on mine. It’s better than horse racing.”