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acknowledged. "Your dad and I didn't get a single wok when we got married. We got twelve pairs of silver candlesticks, though."
    "I won't ever have that problem," Anastasia told her with satisfaction. "What do you mean, a boat? What kind of boat is a sloop?"
    "Well," her mother said dubiously as she got up from her chair, "bear in mind that you will also be renouncing the fun of having childr—— Sam! Don't you dare!" Sam had put his tricycle bell down on the drawing table and had picked up his mother's little pot of ink.
    He looked at her very innocently, still holding the ink.
    "Put that down right
now,
Sam," Mrs. Krupnik said. "Right this minute."
    Sam backed away from the table, still holding the ink.
    "I mean it, Sam," said his mother.
    Anastasia watched with interest as her brother and her mother glared at each other. Sam wasn't terribly naughty terribly often, but every now and then, when he got that defiant look in his eyes, which he had right now, it meant trouble.
    Sam backed slowly across the broad room, watching his mother. He passed the ink back and forth between his hands.
    "BRING THAT TO ME NOW, SAM," Mrs. Krupnik said loudly and firmly.
    Sam grinned. He turned and ran from the room, still carrying the ink. "You can't catch me!" he called.
    "You were talking about the fun of having children, Mom," Anastasia reminded her. "What kind of boat is a sloop?"
    "Go get your brother," Mrs. Krupnik said angrily. "If he spills that on the living room carpet—"
    "Why do I have to go after him? It's not
my
ink," Anastasia complained.
    "
Anastasia,
" Mrs. Krupnik said.
    "Anyway, I've given up chasing boys. That ought to include my brother." Anastasia was arguing, but she was already starting across the room, because she could see that her mother wasn't kidding. Far off, in another part of the house, she could hear Sam chanting, "Wok, wok, wok."
    "Go get him. And earn your nickname," her mother ordered. "
Swifty.
"
    ***
    "It won't come off, Sam. You're going to have ink on your hands for the rest of your life. And that may not bother you
now,
when you're three years old, but believe me, you're going to feel a little funny about it when you're forty.
Then
you'll be sorry."
    Anastasia could hear her mother's voice coming from the bathroom, where she was scrubbing Sam. They had finally caught him and retrieved the ink on the second floor, in his bedroom. So the living room carpet was spared. But there was ink on Sam's hands and sweatshirt.
    Anastasia put the tricycle bell on the table beside Sam's bed and wandered into the bathroom.
    "You never said what a sloop is, exactly," she reminded her mother.
    "Oh, for heaven's sake," her mother said in an impatient voice. She glanced toward the bathtub. "There. See that red boat of Sam's? Single mast, two sails? That's a sloop."
    "Sloop, sloop, sloop," Sam sang, mooshing his hands in the soapy water.
    "Quit wiggling," his mother said. "You're going to stay right here until we get that ink off."
    "
Sam
has a sloop?" Anastasia asked. She picked up the red boat from the corner rim of the bathtub.
    "He's had it for ages. How long have you had that boat, Sam?" Mrs. Krupnik asked.
    "Twelve years," Sam replied cheerfully. "No, a
hundred
and twelve years."
    "You're probably tired of it, " Anastasia said, an idea forming in her mind. "Would you trade it for something?"
    Sam stood still, his hands dangling in the basin full of soapy water, and thought. "Trade it for what?" he asked.
    Anastasia remembered the one thing that Sam had wanted for a very long time, the one thing that she had always said a very firm no to.
    "Sam," she told her brother solemnly, "if you give me your sloop, I will let you take Frank Goldfish into the bathtub with you for one bath. No soap allowed. Just clear water. And no grabbing at Frank, either. Just quiet swimming."
    Sam looked at her with wide eyes. "You will? I can?"
    "If you give me your sloop."
    "Take it. You can have it."
    As she went back to her own bedroom,