“Keep the candy, Chris,” she said tensely, wanting it terribly. “I guess other people like it better than I do.”

She marched out on the porch, and without her jealousy Lena found it no fun sitting on Chris’s lap so she came out, too. Mama and Isobel were talking in whispers and giggles in the swing, and their father was telling them jokes while he passed the lemonade glasses.

“Come and see us when we get settled in London Junction,” said their mother. “I only hope we can get as nice a place as you have. Ma says everything’s awfully dear there, so we’re staying with her at Lois’s till we find the right place.”

“We’ll probably take the old Furness home on the hill,” said their father. “Plenty of room for company there.”

“Oh, Harry! We could never afford it!”

“Look here, now, Daisy, we couldn’t make do with a little house like this here! What’s the sense in moving if we don’t improve ourselves. Isn’t that right, Chris?”

“The Furness place is pretty big,” Chris said slowly. “Biggest house in the Junction.”

“We could never afford that much rent,” said their mother. “Harry is fooling.”

“The hell I am!” shouted their father. “You always seem to think we’re not as good as anybody else in London Junction! I’ll get the biggest goddamn place in town before I’m through. Bigger’n Lois’s place, you can take it from me!”

“Costs money, Harry,” Chris said.

“I’ll get money, don’t you worry about me!” their father said, getting madder. “I can go on the road and make plenty any time I say the word.”

“Oh, Harry, you won’t go on the road!” breathed their mother, wide-eyed with fear. “You promised!”

“I’ll do whatever pays me the most, by cracky!” said their father, not looking at her. “Maybe in the factory, and maybe on the road. I’m not going to sit on my patootie, though, and let the other fellas make all the money. I ain’t built that way.”

There was a quiet, while their mother stared at him, lips trembling, but he would not look back at her. Chris and Isobel swung back and forth in the swing, pretending not to notice how mad their guests were getting. Suddenly the children saw their father jump up from the porch railing and point upward.

“Look at the sky!” he exclaimed. “It’s coming up rain and we’ve got to get going. Come on, kids.”

Their mother and Isobel hung behind whispering, while the girls ran ahead and Chris followed along with their father.

“Did you hear about the man in the balloon?” Chris asked. “He took off from the County Fairgrounds this morning in a balloon and they tell me he claimed he’d land in London Junction this afternoon.”

A man in a balloon! Lena and Marcia stared from one face to another eagerly.

“Can’t tell, we may have to pick up the pieces on our way,” said their father. “We had a fellow in a balloon at Elmville last summer. Went up two hundred feet from the courthouse, then came down in Morton’s cow pasture.”