“But huge blue eggs would have been nice,” I hastened to say.

She nodded. “Yes. That would have been nicer.”

The sun disappeared behind the trees—it would be dark soon. I walked faster.

“How big are dolphins’ children?” she asked.

“Um . . .”

“How do they swim?”

“They kind of slide forward.”

“But how? How do they move? Do they flap, like birds do?”

“No, they just slide.”

“But how?”

“They wiggle their tails, like other fish.”

“Like wiggling your bum?”

“Yes.”

I kept trying to answer the best I could. I didn’t do especially well.

She should have had a teacher. Should have gone to school. But no class instruction was offered at the camp. I was all she had. And I didn’t know anything.

Nonetheless we agreed to try to find out something about the swimming business—how they actually moved through the water.

Dolphins. I had been interested in them too, when I was little, I remembered. There’s something about dolphins, it’s hard not to like them. Maybe because they smile.

“One day I’m going to swim with dolphins for real,” Lou said.

“Mm,” I said.

Then I came up with something about dolphins, something I had read once. That it wasn’t good to swim with them. That people who jump in with the dolphins to swim with them actually disturb them, agitate them, keep them from searching for food for themselves and their young. But I didn’t say that to Lou.

It was almost dark when we reached the camp. I was able to borrow a pair of tweezers and pulled Lou’s splinter out without any difficulty. She didn’t cry. Then we went to eat. Francis was sitting outside the mess hall holding his food bowl in his good hand. The bowl was completely empty.

“You have to hurry,” he said, “if you are going to get food for the youngster. They are running short today.”

My stomach growled loudly when we walked in and I smelled food. I was so hungry that I felt dizzy. I snatched up a bowl of brown stew and a few pieces of bread. And a glass of milk. We received one with every meal. But there wasn’t enough, there was never enough. We would have to go to bed right away—the only thing that helped was to try to sleep off the hunger.

I poured half of the milk into an empty glass and held the glasses side by side.

“Are they the same?” I asked Lou.

She leaned over to look. “Maybe a little more in that one.” She pointed to the one on the left.

I poured a couple of drops out of the glass on the right. “Like that?”

She nodded.

“Then you can choose,” I said.

“But they’re the same.”

“Whoever divides can’t choose. That’s the rule.”

“Okay.”

She took the glass on the left, I took the other.