He smiled like a bad little boy and disappeared round the corner. A stair
creaked--they were the kind of stairs that always creaked like old women's
bones, when you tried to go up them quietly. There was the sound of
something soft stubbing against something hard and a muffled "_Sonofa--_"

"What's matter?"

"Oh, nothing. Blame near broke my toe on Jane Ellen's doll's porcelain
head. 'S all right. 'Night."

"'Night." Then in an admonitory sotto-voce, "Remember, if you wake Dickie,
you've got to tell him stories till he goes to sleep again, or he'll wake
up everybody else!"

"If he wakes, I'll garotte him. 'Night."

"'Night."

Oliver paused for a few minutes, waiting for the crash that would proclaim
that Ted had stumbled over something and waked Dickie beyond redemption.
But there was nothing but a soft gurgling of water from the bathroom and
then, after a while, a slight but definite addition to the distant beehive
noises of sleep in the house. He smiled, moved cautiously into the dining
room, sat down at the small sharp-cornered desk where all the family
correspondence was carried on and from which at least one of the family a
day received a grievous blow in the side while attempting to get around it;
lit the shaded light above it and sat down to read his letter.

It was all Nancy, that letter, from the address, firm and straight as any
promise she ever gave, but graceful as the curl of a vine-stem, gracile as