“Lena’ll have a good time living with Aunt Lois,” Florrie said thoughtfully.

“Who said I’d let her stay there?” Papa cried wrathfully.

“Aunt Lois will let her go to high school,” Marcia said.

“I’d let her stay there, Harry,” Grandma advised. “The minute you start fighting over children, you lose out. If you start a rumpus and make her come back, then something’ll happen to make everybody sorry.”

“Folks’ll talk, now that it’s already printed in the papers that she’s staying there,” Mrs. Carmel obligingly put in. “You don’t want to set folks talking.”

“Maybe Aunt Lois will let us all stay there again,” Florrie said hopefully.

Papa looked sorrowfully at his youngest and shook his head. “That’s the way your children turn against you,” he observed, but he was too relieved about Lena’s return to get really angry. “Florrie is the one I thought I could always count on too. She’s the most like Daisy. So you like your Aunt Lois better than you do Papa, eh, Florrie? Didn’t we always have good times together, Florrie?”

Florrie’s brows met in an anguish of decision.

“We used to,” she answered truthfully. “Only you don’t play the guitar and sing any more.”

Papa laughed. He shook the ashes from the cigar on the floor and leaned back in his chair. Marcia thought it was funny about places and people; the way certain places and certain people preserved a person at his happiest and best, and other places and people distorted him into a grim stranger. With Grandma Reed, Papa was young and gay again, kidding about his troubles, relaxing in Grandma’s easygoing sympathy. But with his wife he had to be on guard all the time, reminding himself that this was the right life, nice people didn’t joke and whistle, nice people worried about money, appearances, tidiness, possessions, and naturally you wanted to be considered nice people. It was too bad it was impossible to be nice people and enjoy life at the same time. It was too bad, too, that if you wanted to be nice people you couldn’t like the companions you naturally might prefer. So Papa felt guilty enjoying himself at Grandma’s, but at the moment the guilt sensation intensified his pleasure. It would worry him later when he had time for it.

Mrs. Carmel, refreshed by her toilet, and anxious not to miss any tidbit, emerged complete from the bedroom now, wearing a rusty black poplin high-necked dress which wafted a musty, attic breeze about the room, aided by Grandma’s fan. Over her finely tucked bosom she wore a variety of brooches and dangling knickknacks, explaining to Papa that if London Junction folks didn’t know enough to buy genuine up-to-date jewelry when they saw it, she herself had the good taste and common sense not to let it go to waste. If Papa saw anything on her chest that he fancied as an adornment to his wife, however, Mrs. Carmel would be glad to surrender it at the lowest possible price, since he was like a real son to her partner. She was in the middle of saying that she was sure her partner thought more of him than she did even of her new son-in-law, Mr. Sweeney, when she was taken with a sneezing attack, quelled only after some magic operations with a large blue bandana handkerchief somehow whipped out of her blouse and a bottle of lavender smelling salts which she inhaled with shut eyes and a prayerful expression.