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fountain.
    “First,” I said, “I’m sorry about the other day. I must have had the book open at the wrong place.”
    The violet eyes glanced up at me, and then became confused and looked away. “It’s all right,” she said.
    “Then you’re not mad at me?”
    She shook her head. “Not any more.”
    “That’s fine,” I said. “Now we can start even again. Next time I’ll read the instructions on the bottle. What do you do around here on Saturday nights?”
    “Not much. There’s just the movie. And sometimes a dance, but not this week.”
    “How about going swimming, then?”
    “I’d like to, but I couldn’t tonight. I’m baby-sitting.”
    “You must be a big operator, with two jobs. What’re you trying to do, get rich?”
    “No, it’s just in the family. I’m staying with my sister’s little girl so she and her husband can go to the movies.”
    “Oh. Well, I’ll drive you out there.”
    “It’s only five or six blocks.”
    “I’ll drive you anyway.”
    She smiled. “Well, all right. Thank you.”
    I watched her while she finished the soda, thinking of that odd gravity about everything she did, and the way she always said “Thank you,” instead of just “Thanks.” A sweet kid from a nice family, you’d say; probably teaches a Sunday-school class and goes steady with some guy in his last year at law school. The only hitch was—where did Sutton fit in? How about the way he’d looked at her, with that secret and very dirty joke of his? It was impossible, and still there it was.
    She told me how to get there and we drove out Main, going north past the used-car lot. I asked her a little about herself, and she told me she’d lived around here most of her life except for a couple of years away at school. Her mother and father had moved to California and she was living with her sister and brother-in-law. I slipped over a couple of oblique questions, looking for a steady boy friend, but she let them slide off without saying one way or the other. She didn’t wear any engagement ring, though. I looked.
    It was a small white house on a gravelled side street, complete with a white picket fence and a young tree in the yard. “Won’t you come in?” she asked.
    Why not? “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
    There were no street lights, but the moon was waxing, and higher now, and I could see the dark shadow of vines growing along the fence and over the porch. The air was heavy and sweet with something I hadn’t smelled for a long time, and after the second breath I knew it was honeysuckle. To make it perfect, I thought, the gate should drag a little and need to be listed to open it. It did.
    All the lights were off and they were sitting on the porch steps. When they saw there was somebody with her, they reached inside the front door and turned on the porch light. The sister was a slightly older version of Gloria, a little heavier, maybe, and having grey eyes instead of the startling violet. They were friendly, but a little embarrassed, like people who didn’t get around very much. Gloria introduced me. His name was Robinson, and he was a slightly built man around my age with thinning yellow hair and rimless glasses.
    “Mr. Madox is the new salesman at the lot,” Gloria said.
    “And apprentice baby-sitter,” I added, clowning a little to break the ice. We shook hands.
    “Well, you don’t look as if they could overpower you,” he said, and grinned.
    As they went out the gate Mrs. Robinson called back, “Make Mr. Madox some lemonade, Gloria.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “We just had a soda.”
    I didn’t notice the child until they had gone. She was maybe two or four years old or something like that, curled up in a long nightgown in the porch swing, a golden-haired girl with big saucer eyes. The whole place, I thought, is as blonde as an old-country smörgäsbord.
    “This is Gloria Two,” she said. “And this gentleman is Mr. Madox, honey-lamb.”
    I never know what to say to kids. That