They thanked him and drove away, leaving him cutting off a chew of tobacco with his penknife.

“I’d like a bank account,” said Lena firmly, but her parents paid no heed.

Marcia, too, had been doing some reflecting.

“When I was the baby, I never got any nickels,” she stated accusingly. “I would have remembered it if I had.”

Marcia’s odd and quite useless talent for remembering was a source of astonishment and amusement to her parents. Sometimes in the night her father would pick her out of bed and take her downstairs to entertain the company with her recollections. The company laughed and gasped, but the uncanniness of her memory was not an endearing trait; invariably the guests drew away respectfully from the little freak and warmed all the more to the pretty, unaffected normalcy of little Lena.

“When I was a baby,” reflected Marcia gloomily in a louder voice, “Lena got all the nickels because she was the oldest. I only got the pennies.”

Lena giggled. Their parents, if they heard, paid no heed but were silent till after they had left Oakville. Then their mother said hesitatingly, “Harry, I felt sorry for Father. None of his own people around. All of you boys, and yet none of you will let him make a home with you. I really think we ought to let him live with us in London Junction when we get settled.”

“That’s it—when,” retorted their father irritably. “No, sir, he’s too big a care. He’d drink up his pension and sit around the room all day chewing tobacco. That’s all he’d do.”

“I get along all right with Father,” said their mother. “Don’t be hard on him, Harry. Half-blind and only one leg, poor old soul.”

The tone of their mother’s voice made Marcia and Lena sorry for their grandfather. The things that made him seem wonderful before—the one eye, the cork leg, the charming companions with equally curious characteristics—all these were changed from wonders to sad misfortunes merely by the pity in their mother’s voice. Poor, poor Grandpa! And they had forgotten to sing a song for him, and to thank him for the pennies!

“Whoa, Bess!” their father called out abruptly.

They had come to a crossroads, where a grimy two-story house flaunted a sign, “Four Corners House.” The sign was nailed to a dead maple tree, with a rusty pail and tin sap tube still attached to the trunk. A stone watering trough and pump were by the hitching post, and a watchdog was tied outside his kennel, growling fearfully at them. The drab exterior of the house was brightened by gay advertisements pinned to the screen door, and by a clothesline hung with red tablecloths. Their father twisted the reins around the post ring and helped their mother to the ground. Perhaps this was to be a visit, too, with even more pennies in the offing. Their father blighted these hopes by motioning them to sit still.

“You kids stay here. We’ll take the baby inside with us.”