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be finished. The carpenters would leave and the kids would have to find another place to play.
    She was by herself. No one was around and it was quiet and she could think for a while. She took from the pocket of her shorts the package of cigarettes she had bought the night before. She breathed in the smoke slowly. The cigarette gave her a drunk feeling so that her head seemed heavy and loose on her shoulders, but she had to finish it.
    M.K.--That was what she would have written on everything when she was seventeen years old and very famous. She would ride back home in a red-and-white Packard automobile with her initials on the doors. She would have M.K. written in red on her handkerchiefs and underclothes. Maybe she would be a great inventor. She would invent little tiny radios the size of a green pea that people could carry around and stick in their ears. Also flying machines people could fasten on their backs like knapsacks and go zipping all over the world. After that she would be the first one to make a large tunnel through the world to China, and people could go down in big balloons.
    Those were the first tilings she would invent. They were already planned.
    When Mick had finished half of the cigarette she smashed it dead and flipped the butt down the slant of the roof. Then she leaned forward so that her head rested on her arms and began to hum to herself.
    It was a funny thing--but nearly all the time there was some kind of piano piece or other music going on in the back of her mind. No matter what she was doing or thinking it was nearly always there. Miss Brown, who boarded with them, had a radio in her room, and all last winter she would sit on the steps every Sunday afternoon and listen in on the programs.
    Those were probably classical pieces, but they were the ones she remembered best. There was one special fellow’s music that made her heart shrink up every time she heard it.
    Sometimes this fellow’s music was like little colored pieces of crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing she had ever imagined about.
    There was the sudden sound of crying. Mick sat up straight and listened The wind ruffled the fringe of hair on her forehead and the bright sun made her face white and damp.
    The whimpering continued, and Mick moved slowly along the sharp-pointed roof on her hands and knees. When she reached the end she leaned forward and lay on her stomach so that her head jutted over the edge and she could see the ground below.
    The kids were where she had left them. Bubber was squatting over something on the ground and beside him was a little black, dwarf shadow. Ralph was still tied in the wagon.
    He was just old enough to sit up, and he held on to the sides of the wagon, with his cap crooked on his head, crying.
    ‘Bubber!’ Mick called down. ‘Find out what that Ralph wants and give it to him.’
    Bubber stood up and looked hard into the baby’s face. ‘He don’t want nothing.’
    ‘Well, give him a good shake, then.’
    Mick climbed back to the place where she had been sitting before. She wanted to think for a long time about two or three certain people, to sing to herself, and to make plans. But that Ralph was still hollering and there wouldn’t be any peace for her at all.
    Boldly she began to climb down toward the ladder propped against the edge of the roof. The slant was very steep and there were only a few blocks of wood nailed down, very far apart from each other, that the workmen used for footholds.
    She was dizzy, and her heart beat so hard it made her tremble.
    Commandingly she talked out loud to herself: ‘Hold on here with your hands tight and then slide down until your right toe gets a grip there and then stay close and wiggle over to the left. Nerve, Mick, you’ve got to keep nerve.’
    Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing. It took her a long time to reach the ladder and to feel safe again. When she stood on the ground at last she seemed much shorter and