THE playroom had been the library once, and Joe's sets of de Maupassant and Balzac were still in the bookcases, but Puff the Pomeranian, the Brownie books, and Miltiades Peterkin Paul were in among them. Under Joe's desk was the cave of Jodie's lion, in private life a bamboo footstool, and glass marbles with their clear twisted colors lay on the carpet and felled the unwary. The tricycle lived behind the playroom door. Through the hall, into the parlor, past the piano, and back into the playroom—that made a race course that Jodie pedaled many times a day, head down, cheeks scarlet, sometimes crying, "Giddap, Clara, old girl!" sometimes, "Choo, choo, choo, choo! Dang dang!" To take a quick turn through the bead portières, the strands sliding over him, cascading tinkling about him, into the dining room and out again, was a forbidden joy often indulged in.
Now the children sat in a solemn row on the old humpy sofa where Joe used to lie and read. Jodie and Charlotte, and Hoagland, too, of course. He was always there, unless they were at his house. Old Shep dozed at their feet, and Kate in her black dress sat opposite them, about to explain how careful they must be, and why, to begin with, they could no longer have
