From the blue distances of jocund Youth, there seemed to float past Fred a delicate odour of the Tillery pigpen. But he got out shakily:

‘Oh, yuh, sure — yuh, that’s right. So this is the family.’

‘Yes, here’s Edna, the wife, and Mac and Cal, the big fellows, and little Tom and Sagittaria.’

Fred did not understand it, but somehow they were no longer in the hall; they were in the living-room, seated, and Cal had helped himself to a cigarette, Mrs. Tillery to candy, while Tom and Sagittaria were bouncing gleefully on the couch, whose springs were none too hale.

(But you couldn’t turn down your relatives, your own cousins, now could you? Blood thicker than — thicker ‘n glue, this time . . . But golly, if Sara came in!)

Enos was caroling, ‘Well, sir, we’re kind of driving down towards West Virginia — fellow told us there was some kind of Rural Resettlement project down there where we could get a farm free, and all the tools. I noticed we was right near here, and I says to Edna, that’s the wife, “We’ll just drop in on fat little Freddie — not make any trouble — maybe he’s got engagements — not give him and his woman . . .” Eglantine, that’s your wife’s name, ain’t it?’

‘Hazel.’

‘Hazel? Kind of a hick name. She just a plain farmer, too, like you and me, Fred? Well, anyway, Edna says no — says it’s almost forty years since you and me have seen each other — you wouldn’t want to entertain us, she says, but I says “Of course he’ll want to see a COUSIN!” I says. “Wouldn’t I be tickled to death to give HIM a shakedown if I had a house and if him and his family come along?” . . . How many kids you got, Fred?’

‘Two.’

‘Oh well, you never were much good. Six, I’ve got — these four, and another one that’s got a fine job selling patent medicines, and the other — well, he had kind of bad luck, and ‘s matter of fact, he was innocent, but he’s in the reformatory, and . . . Anyway, “No,” I says to Edna, “of course he’ll be glad to see us. What’s relatives for?” I says. “Fred may have gone and got rich, but I’ll bet he don’t think he’s too good for his own people — I’ll bet that at heart he’s just a dumb, plain rube like the rest of us.” Is that steak I smell?’

Fred was by now in a simple state of dementia. Beyond question he knew that if he invited his kin, and perhaps kind, to dinner, Hazel would kill him and Sara cremate him. He stuttered:

‘H-had your supper, E-Enos?’

‘Not yet! Ready to eat an ox!’

‘How you fixed for money?’

Enos laughed. His wife laughed. His young laughed. Enos giggled, ‘You wouldn’t kid me, would you? You always were a great little kidder.’ He arose to run at Fred and jab him in the ribs — unnecessarily, Fred thought. ‘Between us, we’ve got about a dollar and a half.’