She did avoid the children. She felt vaguely menaced by their presence. They regarded her with clear brown eyes that seemed to ask, What are you? What on earth are you?

Her part of the house, her “apartment,” was the most cheerful place she had ever lived in. A crazy quilt was spread over the large bed. There was a writing desk with many pigeonholes, scatter rugs covered the floor, and the furniture was sturdy and useful. The bathroom had a clean white tub, and the rubber stopper that prevented water from flowing away was brand new. A little cooking area was closed off from the rest of the room by a wooden screen upon which had been painted a peacock and three yellow butterflies. There were white curtains at the windows, and a bookcase made of redwood planks and glass bricks near the bed. One window faced the street, the other looked out on a long narrow neglected garden with a dry cement pool in the center. The two women were not interested in gardening, and the children didn’t play there. In any event, whatever the children played at, it was not recognizable as such. They read; they played mental chess; they played two-handed bridge. They did not seek out friends.

Max was highly entertained by Annie’s accounts of the household. The father, according to Mrs. Ives, had run off to Bangor with his doxy and never wrote to his children. A check arrived once a month with a regularity that Mrs. Ives said was uncharacteristic. “I think,” Max said, “the little girl will murder the other three one moonless night and become a famous movie star.”

“They’re like a gang,” Annie said once, eating a cucumber sandwich which Mrs. Gannon had fixed for her that morning. “That’s really what they are, a gang of desperadoes.”