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later, the morning sunlight caught the sheen of his red coat at the end of the street, and then he was gone.

CHAPTER SIX
    Sundays in Elmwood were far from Bruce’s favorite days. Except for the fact that there was no cleaning to do, they were almost as bad as Saturdays.
    It wasn’t that he minded going to services. Church had been part of Sunday for as far back as he could remember. It was just that, back in Albuquerque, church had been the beginning of the day, like an introduction. The family had gotten up early and gone and come home again, with the rest of Sunday still ahead of them waiting to be used.
    In Elmwood, church and preparing for it consumed most of the day. Aunt Alice liked to rise late, so breakfast didn’t start until the middle of the morning. Then, there was getting ready, which was a stressful experience. Because there were so many of them in such a small amount of space, thereweren’t enough closets and bureaus, and people were seldom able to find the things they needed.
    “I’ll sure be glad to get into our own place,” Bruce grumbled as he plowed through the pile of laundry stacked in the sewing room closet. His own bed was the sofa in the den, and he was supposed to keep his clothes in the same chest of drawers as his sister. “You’ve got those drawers so crammed with your writing junk there’s no room for anything. Why don’t you throw out some of those notebooks when you’re through with them?”
    “Those poems may be valuable someday,” Andi said practically. “Imagine if Shakespeare had saved the things he wrote when he was ten!”
    “You can’t compare yourself to Shakespeare,” Bruce said. “He was a genius. He sold every single thing he wrote, and you can’t sell a thing.”
    “I may sell something this week,” Andi said pleasantly. “I mailed a poem to
Ladies’ Home Journal
two whole weeks ago, and they haven’t sent it back. Besides, how do you know that Shakespeare sold everything? He probably just didn’t let people know when he didn’t.”
    Andi was in an unusually sunny mood. She had slipped over to the hotel early that morning to giveFriday a bath and her breakfast and was anticipating another long visit with the puppies — which she had named Tom, Dick, and Hairy — in the late afternoon. There had been sweet rolls for breakfast, and she had managed to grab two of them, and it was quite possible that she might become a famous author with the arrival of tomorrow’s mail.
    In contrast to such cheeriness, Bruce’s mood grew darker and darker. He could not find a clean shirt, and his good shoes were missing, and the resulting search took so much time that they were all late to church. Then it turned out to be Communion Sunday, which took an extra half hour, and afterward Aunt Alice ran into some friends and had spent at least twenty minutes chatting with them. By the time they were home and at the dinner table, the whole day seemed to have dissolved with nothing to show for it.
    Actually, these new irritations were only partly responsible for Bruce’s depression. It had started yesterday with his battle with Jerry. Every time he thought back to the boy’s cocky grin and his own undignified ride in the wagon and the sight of the frightened dog cringing between the traces, anger rose within him until it nearly choked him.
    “That creep shouldn’t be allowed to own a pet,” he told Andi afterward. “You should have seen him after that car hit the wagon. Red Rover could have been killed, but that didn’t worry him. He was mad because his wagon was broken and the driver of the car wouldn’t pay for it.”
    “He’s the meanest person I know,” Andi had agreed readily.
    Still, she hadn’t been as upset as she should have been.
    “How old are puppies when their eyes open?” she had asked a moment later, and Bruce had been disgusted. What use was a sister with a temper if she didn’t lose it about things that were important?
    Sunday dinner was finally