Ella shrugged and they got out of the car and walked toward the small red brick house. It was newly built, and looked it. The lawn was just beginning to form a green crust over the earth, and there was the inescapable (though not, to Tom, unpleasant) odor of manure in the air. Across the road stretched a forest of slender, white-gray trees, and sparse foliage. Someday it would be a neighborhood.

Inside the house there was still the after-smell of dinner pork chops, and the sound of percolating coffee. Tom threw his coat over the couch and walked through the living room. It was large and not yet “lived-in.” There were a few pictures on the tan-painted walls, hundreds of books stacked about in cartons on the floor (Tom planned to build shelves, but he kept pushing the job out of his mind), a number of lamps and knickknacks. In a corner sat the television set, flickering as all television sets in the area did.

In front of it sat Gramp. He was watching a quiz program.

Tom went into the kitchen, where Ruth was doing the dishes. She looked young and fresh, much younger and fresher than Tom ever did.

“Hi.”

She turned and flashed an automatic glance at the stove clock. “Honestly,” she said, and unplugged the percolator. She poured a strong dark brew into three ready cups. “Why don’t you just live at that office?”

“I do,” he said, and kissed her. Then he noticed the expression on her face. It was a look of worry, the look he’d come to recognize.

“Oh-oh, what’s wrong?”

Ruth smiled. “Well,” she said, “nothing, actually.”

“Come on, now.”

“Well—” She turned to Ella. “Honey, why don’t you look at TV with your coffee?”

“With Gramp?” Ella said. Her grandfather had a remarkable talent for selecting the worst programs on the air. And he always had his way—always.

“Then read a book or something, would you? I’d like to talk to your father.”

Tom put up his hand. “You’re forgetting something,” he said, smiling. “Kitten’s a junior now. She’s grown up.”

Ruth glanced at both of them. “All right. Not that it’s anything, really. But—I got a funny kind of phone call today. Dad took it and he was talking a mile a minute, and I took over to see what was up, you know, and—well, it kind of made me upset.”

“What was it? A salesman?”

“No. I don’t know who it was. Sounded like a young fellow. But he’s not the . . .”

Tom sighed and took a sip of his coffee. There was no way to hurry Ruth.

“Well,” she went on, “I took the phone from Dad and asked who it was. ‘Who are you?’ they said. I told them. Then they, I mean, this fellow, whoever he was, said, ‘I’m making sort of a survey,’ and would I answer a few questions.”