Skip whistled between his teeth, stirring the eggs with the fork with which Uncle Willy had beaten them. When the mass congealed, he pushed it out upon a plate, salted it, took it to the sinkboard near his uncle. His uncle meanwhile had shoved a piece of bread in the toaster and poured a second cup full of coffee. Skip ate standing. “What looks good today?”

His uncle grunted, sucked his teeth with an air of disgust, folded the racing sheet, and tossed it over.

“When’s he going to let you go out there?”

Uncle Willy shrugged, implying that Mr. Chilworth hadn’t said when he might take an afternoon off for the races.

“Well, when did you go last?” Skip asked.

“Three weeks.”

Skip considered. “You know, this isn’t much of a job you’ve got here, Unc. The wages are nothing. You scrub and wash, mow the lawn and dig crab grass, and he doesn’t even give you a day off for the races.”

Uncle Willy waited for a moment before answering. “I’m eating. So are you,” he pointed out with a dry air.

“So? It’s not hard to eat now. Times are pretty good. Even the panhandlers are fat. For what you do here, working your tail off from morning to night, you ought to do better.”

“You know where I can do better?” Uncle Willy asked mildly.

“An experienced man like you,” Skip added with a sidelong glance.

An oddly quiet and attentive look came over his uncle. He put down the cup of coffee and regarded Skip for a moment in silence. The buzzing of a fly on the pane over the sink was the only sound in the room.

Skip said, “How old are you now? Fifty? By now you must have caught on to a lot of angles.”

“I might have.” Under the attentive expression was a sort of question.

“What were you in for?”

“I don’t want to talk about that, Skip. One thing I’ve learned here, learned from Mr. Chilworth, is that the past is as dead as you let it be. And I want mine to be really forgotten.”

Skip nodded indifferently. “Sure. You’re right.” He seemed ready to abandon the line of conversation.

“I made my mistakes, just as you did, Skip; but we both paid for them with time out of our lives. You’re lucky, you’re young, you haven’t lost all the middle years.” The tone had the air of sermon in it, but Uncle Willy’s eyes had taken on a certain sharpness. He studied Skip warily, prying at him with little glances.

“Just blowing off my big mouth,” Skip said apologetically.

“Nothing specific in mind?”

“No, not a thing.”