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swooping. I couldn't seem to get

it out of my mind, so I read everything I could find about hawks and I began to notice them in the fields, and they seemed, just, to say by their flight what I so often felt . . . I cannot put it into words, but sometimes I can feel what it would be like to soar . . ."
         She shuddered involuntarily, but when he moved to touch her she backed away. She was deeply humiliated, chastened, by what she had revealed, all the more so because she could not know why she had accepted the acceleration of the courtship. Was she afraid that if she made him wait, if she asked that he go at her pace, he would be lost to her?

    "It is time enough for a first meeting," Mama said when Willa told her that Owen would be leaving at the end of the week. "Perhaps he will be able to visit again on his return trip," she went on, probing, trying to discover something of Owen's plans, wanting to know what Willa knew. But Willa was not in a mood to cooperate, and said nothing. Mama controlled her temper, ending weakly with, "You can correspond, you know. Letters are a fine way to become better acquainted."
         Willa changed the subject abruptly, which caused me to look up from the peas I was shelling. "I think Owen would enjoy a special gala performance of the Family Puppet Show," she said. Mama's mood changed quickly. She loved the puppet shows. The year of Grandmother's death, when Willa had come home from Wellesley College to stay, she brought with her several small puppets and taught the boys how to work them. That Christmas, Pa and Gib, with Mama's help, had made a puppet that was a remarkable caricature of Willa. After that, nothing would do but that each of us have our own puppet. Willa wrote the first of the Family Puppet Shows, followed by increasingly elaborate productions devised by the boys, who seemed able to speak freely through their puppet counterparts.
         We gathered in the music room after the evening meal. Val started with a comedy skit he had written. As usual, my puppet was to do a dance . . . in my brothers' productions, I was always cast as a dancer. I took my position behind the stage, and realized that I would have a good view of Owen and Willa, who sat side by side in the front row of chairs, their shoulders almost, but not quite, touching. The closeness sent a shiver down my spine.
         Owen would be the only permanent member of the audience, since the rest of us would, for one skit or another, have to take part. From the first moment, Owen laughed and cheered and clapped. The Little Boys were easily infected with his good humor, and joined him. Then we all caught it and gave what must have been the most exuberant Family Puppet Show in history, making fun of the personal foibles of each of us—and making Owen Reade a party to it all.
         Val, handling the puppet that was Willa, said in a high falsetto, "Oh Gib, you must not kill the nice falcon, not even if it has eaten four hundred and thirteen of our doves. Falcons are too beautiful, too wonderful, too glorious." And one of the Little Boys, trying to imitate Gib, said in a pretend growl, "Hawks are varmints, Willa. Time you learned that hawks are just plain varmints." Everybody laughed at this charade, recognizing the ongoing argument between Willa and Gib. Between Willa and anyone who believed that hawks were to be killed.
         When it became too dark to see, we lit the sconces and pulled out the chandelier to throw more light on the stage. Pa and the Big Boys had been working in the fields all day, but the play seemed to revive them. Or, I think, Owen Reade's appreciation revived us all.
         "Your puppet family is remarkable," he would say, clapping and laughing; I think that evening was the first time we realized it was so.
         Mama, perhaps, most of all. She came to sit next to Owen while Willa and the Little Boys did their skit, and I heard her say, "Willa is the one who started the family theater.