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 and donned fresh pajamas. This suit had as yet its original cord. Then she went on her bare silent feet and stood again at the door of her brother’s room, listening.

“Look out, Josh,” she called suddenly, flinging open the door, “I’m coming in.”

His room was dark, but she could discern the shape of him on the bed and she sped across the room and plumped jouncing onto the bed beside him. He jerked himself up sharply.

“Here,” he exclaimed. “What do you want to come in here worrying me, for?” He raised himself still further: a brief violent struggle, and the niece thudded solidly on the floor. She said Ow in a muffled surprised tone. “Now, get out and stay out,” her brother added. “I want to go to sleep.”

“Aw, lemme stay a while. I’m not going to bother you.”

“Haven’t you been staying under my feet for a week, without coming in here where I’m trying to go to sleep? Get out, now.”

“Just a little while,” she begged. “I’ll lie still if you want to go to sleep.”

“You won’t keep still. You go on, now.”

“Please, Gus. I swear I will.”

“Well,” he agreed at last, grudgingly. “But if you start flopping around—”

“I’ll be still,” she promised. She slid quickly onto the bed and lay rigidly on her back. Outside, in the hot darkness, insects scraped and rattled and droned. The room, however, was a spacious quiet coolness, and the curtains at the windows stirred in a ghost of a breeze.

“Josh.” She lay flat, perfectly still.

“Huh.”

“Didn’t you do something to that boat?”

After a while he said: “What boat?” She was silent, taut