“I suppose so.” Joel gave a deep sigh and when Ellen looked up next time, he was fast asleep.

So at last she managed to finish Cornelius’s shirt and could wrap it up to give to Cathy when she dropped in after school. And Ellen would have been ready to bet a considerable sum that she would drop in today.

Ellen was shy of looking at the boy’s sleeping face, and turned to rock a few minutes and look at the hairy woodpecker greedily eating suet. Such a bold, beautiful bird! She had always been fond of woodpeckers. The zestful way they had of going about getting a living! … She had to admit that a lot of what Joel said made some sense—not exactly sense, but she understood his feelings of hatred at the way the country was going—toward more and more things and less and less of what he called “life.” But the trouble was that that word seemed to have no definite meaning. It was just an idea in his head, poor boy. He seemed to know what he was against but not in any clear way what he was for. His whole generation had been wounded by the war in Vietnam—that was part of it surely. And she supposed that if he dropped out of college for good he would face the draft. He had not spoken of this, but it must be in his mind—one more reason why he didn’t want to go home.

Cathy burst in eagerly to interrupt these thoughts, then stopped at the doorsill when she saw Joel lying there.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “Is he sick?”

“Only asleep.”

Joel opened his eyes and, from the floor, looked up into Cathy’s. It was a long straight look.

“So it’s Cathy,” he said, getting up rather clumsily. “You caught me napping.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“Want me to walk you home? Looks sort of nice out for a change.”

“O.K.”

“Put on a coat, Joel. You’ll catch your death in this wind,” Ellen said dryly. “Take that navy coat of Nick’s—on a hook in the hall.”

“Thanks.”

“And wear your boots,” she added.

Ellen gave Cathy the shirt to take home, and Joel carried her books. Watching them go slowly across the green, heads bent, apparently not aware of anything but each other, Ellen shook her head and sighed. It was not exactly what had been planned for Cathy, but then life, Ellen had observed, rarely followed human plans.

CHRISTINA’S JOURNAL—April 22