‘Cal’s scum! He’s a cousin-by-accident!’

And once Cal tried to kiss me. That’s what made me run away — and I was afraid what might happen to Baby — oh, Howard was always sweet to the baby, even when he was drunk, but he was so shaky — once he almost dropped the baby on the floor, when he was trying to dress it — and I didn’t want it to grow up listening to Howard and Cal sing “The Old Oaken Bucket”!’

‘But Annabel, dear,’ said Hazel, ‘what’s Howard going to do, now he’s out of the firm?’

‘Oh, he has a hundred new plans a day: he’s going to join the army and learn flying. He’s going to Hollywood and be a star — but oh, his face is changing so; it almost seems as if it was getting coarse already . . . Oh, my darlings, I don’t like to talk this way about him!’

‘Go on! You’re as much our child as he is,’ Fred vowed.

Hazel looked only a little doubtful.

‘And then he talks about going to Alaska — he thinks he can get a free farm there — he says it’s the only place where “a young fellow has a chance”. And he talks about making millions selling cotton-stripping machines. And the latest I heard, he was going to be a tree doctor! But no matter what he says, I feel he’s just given up. Completely discouraged. He’s only part to blame, maybe . . .’

Fred groaned, ‘I’m to blame! Me and my insisting on running away.’

‘No. Your going isn’t to blame. But maybe your putting it off so long is. Sara and Howard thought you’d always be there and nurse them.’

‘Annabel! What about Sara? Does she seem happy?’ demanded Hazel.

‘Darling, Sara has now been married to her Walter for fifty years, and she just can’t understand why Howard doesn’t obey me the way Walter has obeyed her, these sixty-seven years they’ve been married . . . She made him put on a sale of surrealist paintings in the store; they already have two pictures in it; one of them was done by a bookkeeper in Schenectady, and one by a Frenchman, who wanted to come over, but they wouldn’t let him out of the asylum.’

Fred interrupted, ‘Sweet child, I love you, but we must get going . . . Hazel, I find I have to take an evening train, to catch the Sovereign at Havre, tomorrow . . . I’ll be in New York in six and a half days!’

‘But you want us to come along — me, anyway?’ said Hazel.

She was a little reluctant.

‘No. Stay here. Show the Riviera to Annabel. Take her to Paris. I want two people in this doggone family to do what they want to do for once. If you can pull THAT off, the Associated Press will put it on the wire, and it’ll go down in history as the one big event of the year!’