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him."
    "Oh." Trevor decided that there was absolutely nothing he could do with that explanation but accept it. Rather like the way, he reflected, he could only accept his absorption into this ridiculous family.
    When Taylor came into the house some time later, she found him in a room off the den, seated in a comfortable chair with Dory nestled confidingly in his lap as they both listened to Jessie play the baby grand piano.
    Trevor sent her a quick smile—instantly returned—but said nothing as she came to perch silently on the arm of his chair. And they listened intently as Jessie completed a rather difficult sonata with an expertise belying her young age. As soon as she'd finished, he asked, "D'you compete, Jess?" He'd adopted the diminutive of her name at her request.
    She turned on the bench to regard him with bright eyes. "No, never have. I just love to play. D'you ... think I'm good enough to compete?"
    He replied with total honesty. "I went to a West Coast competition last year for kids under eighteen; if you'd competed, you would have won."
    Her gray eyes glowed brilliantly. "Really?"
    "I think you'd have won, Jess. I really do."
    Jessie bounded up, excitement lighting her small face. 'Taylor, d'you think Mother and Daddy'd let me?"
    Taylor was smiling at her. "Why don't you ask them? Mother's digging up flowers out back; Daddy went out there when we came in."
    Instantly, her sister raced from the room.
    "Digging up flowers?" Trevor queried dryly.
    Before she could answer, Dory wiggled from his lap, saying in her gruff little voice, "I want to watch Daddy comb his hair." She looked sternly at Trevor, her hand on his knee. "You won't go away?"
    "Not for a while," he said gently, and watched her leave the room before he looked up at Taylor plaintively. "Digging up flowers? And what's that about your father combing his hair?"
    She grinned faintly. "It's a little game Mother and Daddy play. At least I think it is, since it's been going on as long as I can remember. The flower bed's Daddy's, you see; he can get anything to grow. And Mother can't tell a flower from a weed until the former's bloomed, which they haven't as yet. So every day during the spring Mother wanders out to the flower bed just before Daddy's due home. And when Daddy comes in and is told by someone—Jamie today—that Mother's in back with a trowel, he lets out an anguished groan and bolts out there to save his flowers."
    Fascinated, Trevor said, "What does he say to her?"
    "Always the same thing. He takes the trowel away from her very gently and asks if she'd mind fixing him a cup of coffee. Then when she comes into the house, he rakes his hair with both hands—the 'combing' Dory was talking about— and hides the trowel in the garage."
    "How's her coffee?" he asked, remembering Sara's ineptitude in the kitchen.
    Taylor laughed. 'Terrible! Daddy says it's strong enough to raise the dead; he pours it in the flower bed when she isn't looking. It seems to be a dandy fertilizer."
    Chuckling, Trevor reached quite unconsciously to pull her down into his lap. "You have a remarkable family, lady."
    "Never dull, anyway," she responded, smiling, utterly relaxed in his lap.
    He realized then what he'd done. For a moment, he looked bemusedly at their positions, she on his lap and he with one arm around her shoulders and the other lying possessively across her thighs, then closed his eyes for a moment. "I knew it'd happen," he said mournfully.
    "What?" she asked, polite, her hands resting on the arm across her thighs.
    "I knew you'd entice me into this loony bin!"
    "/ didn't call you," she reminded.
    "Didn't you?" his voice was rueful. "Now I know how Ulysses felt."
    "If you're referring to a siren song; I'll point out that I've never warbled a note in your direction."
    "You bewitched me!"
    She giggled. "If it makes you feel better to think that."
    "It makes me question my sanity slightly less than I would otherwise." he admitted wryly.
    "Better bewitched than