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luggage pickup. “What did you think of Carolus Bledsoe, Esquire? Do you suppose he’s the one who bought her all those orchids?”
    “If he did, he needs to get his head examined,” was Osbert’s considered opinion. “I expect what happened was that some editor who’s trying to persuade her to switch publishers gave her a bunch, and then her own editor gave her another bunch not to go. They put them on their expense accounts.”
    “Did anybody ever give you any?”
    “They wouldn’t dare. What do you think we Western writers are, a bunch of sissies? I’ve never even been offered a tarantula. By the way, when did Aunt Arethusa order a custom-made crystal bowl for her goldfish? I didn’t know she had a goldfish. How come she didn’t expect us to fish-sit while she was away? Don’t tell me she’s given McNaster the run of her house?”
    “Darling, don’t bug your eyes out like that. Of course she hasn’t Arethusa may be a trifle absentminded, but she’s not plumb loco. I only made up that story about the goldfish bowl to take Wilhedra Thorbisher-Preep down a peg or two. She had no business being so snippy about Lobelia Falls.”
    “Was Wilhedra snippy?”
    “Certainly Wilhedra was snippy. She talked as if we were all a bunch of starving church mice.”
    “Now that you mention it, I am starving. Want to stop on the way home for a nibble of cheese?”
    “If we can find a place,” Dittany agreed.
    What she meant was a place that didn’t object to large doglike creatures with less than perfect table manners. Stopping at a restaurant was apt to mean either take-out hamburgers or hurt looks from Ethel for having been left alone while they ate.
    They settled for hamburgers and ate in the car, Dittany having first spread a large plastic tablecloth so they wouldn’t get meat juice all over the new upholstery. Back in Lobelia Falls, they put Arethusa’s two pink tapestry suitcases inside her front door, to which they had a key, and went home half expecting to see her and Andrew McNaster seated at their kitchen table with napkins in their laps and knives and forks at the ready.
    But Arethusa never came, not even at suppertime. The evening was peaceful, pleasant, yet somehow a trifle unsettling.

Chapter 4
    Working at fever heat, stoked by Ditanny with cups of tea, stacks of cinnamon toast, bowls of stew, and molasses cookies which he wolfed down without taking time to bite off the crinkles one by one as was his wont, Osbert finished his play late Tuesday night. On Wednesday, he held a reading for the board of trustees and Desdemona Portley to tumultuous applause, even from Arethusa.
    Nobody doubted Dangerous Dan McGrew would win the competition hands-down. Mr. Glunck thought the theatrical collection would be just the ticket for the upstairs back bedroom provided the ThorbisherFreeps threw in the display cases. Everybody was agog to get rolling.
    And roll they must. One thing Desdemona hadn’t happened to mention until she’d got the Grub-and-Stakers safely hooked was that they had only about a month left to put on their play. She’d already wasted most of the time allotted for the contest in vain efforts to get her old company back together. The new group understood her difficulties as soon as they started trying to assemble a cast.
    Specifically, the problem lay in the ingrained reluctance of the average Canadian male to make a fool of himself in public. Nobody’s husband had any particular objection to being one of the boys whooping it up in the Malamute saloon, as long as the rest of the boys would be right there whooping it up with him. Persuading any one of them to accept a role where he’d have to stand up on his hind legs all by himself and spout off a lot of high-flown guff was a far, far different matter. Yet the characters of the miner and Dan McGrew were absolutely central to the play.
    Osbert refused to take either part. He was proud to have written the play, as well he might be. He was not only