“How amazed?” asked Sina flatly.

“What?” asked the salesman, beginning finally to falter.

“How far? Tell me how far and I’ll tell you how amazed,” said Sina.

“Did you want a precise distance? We can’t give a precise distance, I am desolated to say.” The salesman looked very, very sad. He had a long mustache. Somehow he made it droop.

“Yes, but approximately?”

“How far away did you have in mind?” countered the salesman, rallying.

“Outer space,” said Sina. In for a crazy penny, in for a crazy pound.

“Ah, hahaha, I can see you’re a trickster, that you are,” said the salesman, laughing with his mouth but showing concern with the rest of his face.

“Yes, right, what about it, then? Can your radios get waves from outer space?” asked Sina, looking down at him over her glasses.

Sina was so tall that when she did this, it occurred to you that from that height she could step on you if she chose. Or even eat you, if such an ogre-like urge should come upon her. It usually brought people around.

“Well, of course,” said the salesman. “I’m certain it can, this lovely pink model, although, naturally, there is no way of testing this, as radio waves aren’t sent from outer space, are they? Hahaha. But if they were sent from, uh, outer space, I’m sure this pink Bakelite model would do the job.”

“Sina,” I whispered, having spent this time studying all the price tags, “it’s the most expensive one.”

But the salesman must have heard me because he said, “That’s because it’s our space model.” And he did a little flourish with his hand that was meant to convey the luxury nature of this radio. Or perhaps a flying saucer. It was difficult to tell.

“We’ll take it,” said Sina.

We drove home silently.

Sina carried the radio on her lap as if it were a baby.

And she must have been having second thoughts as she hauled it to her studio because when Old Tom came toward us to find out what had taken us so long and spied the radio, Sina said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Old Tom, who knew that tone, turned on his heel and went back to plant the cabbages, but Gladys, emerging from the house and also spying the radio, beamed from ear to ear.

“Finally!” she said.

THE LETTERS

At lunch Sina gave Zebediah his letter and off he trotted upstairs, presumably to read it. Winifred and I were in near despair. If we followed him to steal it, he would only tell Sina again. We had come up with no other way to find out what was going on. Old Tom had told me once that even little children in France were doing dangerous jobs helping the French resistance. I couldn’t help but feel that the Vichy regime would be doing happy slap-dancing if Winifred and I joined the French resistance.

After lunch, Gladys suggested that she and Sina listen to the radio together.