“Let’s have her in,” Thor said, “and done with it. It’s her education, it’s her life, no three old people should make this decision for her.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Where is she?” Czar demanded, irritably.

Bridie, very brisk now, was already at the telephone. “Down at the Northern Light, probably, waiting for the breakup news to come in. She and her crowd got together made a pool, five dollars apiece, Chris bet on the ice would break up May third, it’s been such an unusual winter.”

“Oh, stop clacking and get her,” Czar said. “I want this settled now. Today.”

“Neurotic behavior,” Thor observed; and strolled over to the glass-fronted bookcase where he stood surveying the titles, a look of unbelief on his face.

“No,” Bridie was saying, at the telephone. “No, nobody’s sick. I tell you, Chris, they ain’t. It’s just important, something’s got to be settled. No, now. Right now. I don’t care if you might win a hundred thousand dollars in the ice breakup, anyway it’s always won by some construction worker nobody ever heard of. Well, you get yourself over here, your Grandpas say.”

Bridie hung up. “She’s coming.” She held at arm’s length the check in her hand. “What you boys want to do with this? One of you put it in the bank, for Chris? Or what?”

“You do it,” Czar snapped. “But it’s not to be used till she’s twenty-one. Interest till then. And she’s not to know.”

“Pooh! A lot of fuss over a bit of money like that. Your friends spend that for a nice little car, in the States.”

She began to bustle needlessly about the room, straightening a window shade already straight, plumping a cushion, adjusting a lamp shade. Thor had resignedly taken a book from the shelf and was seated reading, his steel-rimmed spectacles slipped halfway down his nose. Czar, at his desk, jotted down figures on a scrap of old envelope. When a car stopped abruptly with a snort of engine and a squeal of brakes, the three stayed as they were, frozen in attitude, like figures in a children’s game of statue.

Four heads could be discerned at the car windows. “Unless it’s something serious make it snappy,” a voice called. “We’ll wait.”

When the girl came in with a rush she looked apprehensively from one to the other. “What’s the matter! What happened!”

Czar put down his pen, Thor closed his book, Bridie came over to her and plucked at her parka. The girl shrugged away from her, her eyes were wide with alarm.

“Nothing. Nothing.” Czar said, smoothly.

“What is it? Come on! I’m braced for it. Something dreadful has happened.” The three looked a little foolish now that they were confronted with the lovely anguished face.

Mischievously Thor explained, “Czar here wants to discuss some plans for your education.”

She stared. She repeated the word. “You mean nobody’s sick, and you’re not killing each other, and the house hasn’t burned down?” She looked so terribly young and vulnerable; they felt so old and foolish.