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couple of days before the banquet, when her mother had sent her over with a pair of shoes to ask Aunt Pearl whether they would do, Frances recited, “By the shores of Gitche Gumee....” He could write down “Hiawatha” too.
    Some of the stenotype writers believed in using “short forms,” Uncle Mike often said, but he did not, and Frances had heard him shout at Nathan about it, as if Nathan, who said he didn’t care whether Mike used short forms or not, was in league with the people who favored them. As far as Frances could tell, short forms were abbreviations. Someone had figured out a code within the code, a greater secret. Frances thought this sounded exciting. A whole phrase, Uncle Mike had explained, would be written not with just a few strokes—but one stroke.
    â€œâ€˜By the shores of Gitche Gumee’?” she asked now.
    â€œNo, nothing like that. Something like ‘by order of the court’ or ‘the State of New York.’”
    â€œI think it would be nice to say something so long with just one little—” she demonstrated “— poosh .” She thrust out several fingers as her uncle did.
    â€œFor crying out loud!” Uncle Mike said, hitting the table. “Is that what you think is the way to do things—shortcuts?” He didn’t shout quite the way he did at Simon, but he looked at her as if he was deciding he disapproved of her. “You want everything made easy for you?”
    â€œI don’t take shortcuts,” Frances said.
    The banquet was in October, a few months after Simon had run away at the lake. He had not run away, he had said, when she finally asked him about it.
    â€œYou stayed out all night.”
    â€œI did not.” It was true: Simon had been on his cot on the porch, in his clothes, in the morning. Nobody had said anything.
    â€œBut where were you all that time?”
    â€œIn the woods,” he had said, “thinking.”
    â€œWeren’t you hungry?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYour mother cried,” she had said. After she was in bed that night, after the other couples had returned to their cottages, she’d heard Aunt Pearl crying.
    â€œShe loves me too much,” said Simon.
    The night of the banquet Frances’s mother wore a rust-colored dress that made noise when she walked. The neckline was square and there was ruching at the neck, Hilda said. The cloth was bunched there, and gave off a different sheen from that of the rest of the dress. Her shoes were almost the same color as her dress. Frances’s dress was wool and didn’t shine. Her father wore a suit. They met Uncle Mike and Aunt Pearl and Simon outside their apartment house, a few blocks from where Frances and her parents lived, so they could travel together on the subway.
    Aunt Pearl, wearing a blue dress with her coat open over it, came to meet them and threaded her arm under Frances’s mother’s arm, around her back and out the other side, so Aunt Pearl’s fingers reached Hilda’s other arm. Frances moved close to Aunt Pearl to see if she’d do the same thing to Frances with her other arm, but Aunt Pearl put her other hand into her pocket—and then the first hand, too; she’d held on to Hilda for only a moment. They walked in a group toward the subway station. Frances ran her finger down the sleeve of Aunt Pearl’s coat, but lightly, so her aunt didn’t notice.
    Her mother was urging everyone along, trying to get them to walk a little faster. Uncle Mike was walking ahead. It was Hilda’s hand, moving as if through water in the air behind Pearl’s back, that made her the leader. She seemed to encourage Pearl as much as to hurry her. Aunt Pearl walked with a long stride, in low heels. She always wore low heels because of her height. Her hands pulled at her pockets.
    Simon walked by himself, wearing a suit like his father’s. Simon’s hair was dark. He wore