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a bother if he felt amorous when you were tired. At best it was messy and undignified. She sometimes wondered if the movies and the advertising industry had dreamed the whole thing up, to make money.
    But thisthis loving someone like yourself, who knew what you wanted and how to give it to you! She felt her mouth curling into a smile, remembering the response Bake had wrung from her in spite of her fright and ineptness.
    She boarded her bus and sat hugging her books, beaming at the commonplace houses and stores as they slid by.
    For all the pleasure of remembering, she was a little shy about facing Bake. Reliving the hours in Bake's bed, she felt that the whole thing had been a dream. Things like this don't happen. I can't believe it. She took her accustomed chair and sat looking at the floor, with trembling knees and pounding heart, until Bake came in and sat down beside her, looking just as she always did. Then the fright dissolved. She felt cool and calm.
    "Hi."
    "Hi."
    "Everything all right with you?"
    "Everything is fine with me."
    "Really?"
    "Sure."
    Down between the chairs, Bake's hand brushed hers so lightly that the touch might have been an accident. "We might stay down for lunch, if you're free."
    "That would be fine." The ruled lines of Frances' notebook came into focus; the instructor's voice, which had been an inane buzz above Bake's whispering, made sense again. Everything was all right.

CHAPTER 6
    “So then what happened?"
    "Oh, I don't know," Frances said a little vaguely. She came back to the present, looking around the living room with a slightly dazed expression. "I talk too much."
    "No, it's fascinating." Bake stood up, carried the coffee cups into the kitchen, and brought them back full and steaming. "I mean, you read about things like that, but I've never known anyone it really happened to."
    "It's nothing to brag about," Frances said shortly.
    "Poor baby. I wish I'd known you then."
    "But I had books. And then when I got into high school there was Miss Putnam." Tenderness crept into her voice. Miss Putnam, angular and strict like a comic-strip schoolteacher; where was she now? "She got me a scholarship to go to college," Frances said, cradling her cup in both hands and watching the tendrils of steam curl up into the warm air of the room. "A little denominational college where she'd gone. She knew somebody on the board, I think. She paid for my books and bought me a pair of shoes and lent me a suitcase to put my clothes in."
    Ma had been pleased and excited. She sat up against the pillow, color coming to her face that had been pinched with pain since the last baby was born dead. "You go, Frankie. Don't let anything stand in your way. Not anything!"
    "Who'll take care of things here?"
    "Never mind. It's your chance."
    Remembering, she laughed harshly. "My father whipped me when I told him. He'd have killed me, I guess, if Ma hadn't threatened to call the sheriff. It's the only time I ever saw her stand up to him."
    Bake's mouth was soft. She laid a comforting hand on Frances' arm. "You've had a rough time."
    "It's all right."
    "How come you didn't finish college? Miss Whatsername run out of money, or something?"
    "My mother died. It took her a long time to die. Cancer."
    Put like this, it seemed incredible that any human being could agonize as she had done in those gray barren weeks after her mother's burial, crushed under the load of housework and despairing of ever getting free, cut off from the education that was her only way of escape, loaded with the knowledge that if she had stayed at home, her mother's suffering might have been lightened. Not endedno, it was too late for thatbut sometimes, as she mopped endless floors and wrung clothes out of the soapy water, it seemed to her that no sacrifice would have been too much if it could have spared her mother one hour of that eating, animal-like pain.
    "Then Ma's brother came to see us," she said slowly, "and took the kids home to his farm."
    She had