socks, I could hear their voices. 'Does he live with you?' Spike asked. 'Sure, he does now.' John's voice always sounds negligent but authoritative. 'Why?' persisted Spike, 'is he your cousin?' 'No.' This in a tone that seemed to deprecate the taste of the interlocutor. I thought the discussion was at an end and put the oars into place when John, somewhat more conciliatory, resumed, 'His mother's dead, too.' That was rather touching, for there was a hint of wistfulness behind John's male nonchalance. 'I know, Folly went to the funeral,' said Spike, horridly concrete as usual, then added, 'Frances says Rhoda's going to get married to him.' 'Frances,' said her brother, 'talks through her hat.' 'Well, aren't they?' John became impatient, perhaps because he had been offered a startling new thought by a boy for whose intelligence he has no great respect. 'How do I know!' he exclaimed. 'They can if they want to. If they do, though, I hope it's when I'm at school. I don't want to go to any old weddings.'
"With muffled oars I + rowed away, like a culprit, assommé. Spikey's voice and freckles and vulgar assumptions were Aldergrove in a nutshell. The future there would be a thing peopled by grown-up Spikes. As I got clear of the shore I saw the Marple estate rolling and dipping and a big happy house sprawling firmly, oh so firmly, on top of it all,—while aloof on its own little knoll stood the deserted house I was born in. I saw a gigantic pair of scales, with Rhoda on
