Shep trotted home, through the clicking gate, around the house to the kitchen door.
"Now wipe your feet off, Jodie Green. Don't you dass come tracking snow all over my clean floor!"
Jodie paused for a drink from the sink faucet. The water in the glass changed from cloudy to clear, and he drank it in great gulps punctuated by loud panting sighs, as if he had been in the desert a long time, far from an oasis.
"Where's mother, Lizzie?"
"Run away with a soldier."
The big round box with its little round boxes nested inside—cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmegs, mace—was open on the table, the kitchen smelled warmly spicy. He felt sleepy, coming in from the cold; he put his head on the kitchen table and yawned widely.
"What are we going to have for dessert for supper?"
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."
His mother really was out. He didn't like the house without her, so still, as if it were watching him, as if things were happening behind his back. He climbed into a chair in the parlor window to look for her.
The dusk was deepening, the are light on the corner lit, but he could see snow beginning to fall again. No one passed by, footprints and wheel tracks were lightly filled and hidden. Behind him familiar things disappeared in a darkness that pressed him against the
