Complete Novelet by ROBERT F. YOUNG
Her pupils handed in the usual run of compositions, but she found one that was out of this world . . .
My FATHER bought a new ford, a red one, and i spent my summer vacation mostly, riding in my fathers ford. My fathers ford is the fastest car ever and when he opens it up on sunday it seems like the other cars are standing still: i had a wonderful summer vacation riding in my fathers red ford.
Abruptly Miss Ellis decided to grade the rest of the "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" compositions at Mrs. Harper's. Ordinarily she did all of her work in the classroom, leaving her evenings free for TV, but there were times when the classroom seemed, despite its unobtrusive modern architecture and its modernistic vista of close-cropped lawn and youthful elms, like a setting out of Dostoevski's "Crime and Punishment."
She enclosed the compositions in a manila folder, then straightened her desk, aligning the books between the sphinx bookends, making a military echelon of the pencils, and shoving everything that would not lend itself to a geometric pattern into a convenient drawer. Mr. Findley frequently checked the classrooms before going home and he loved to leave little notes on the teachers' desks, sarcastic little notes alluding to stray papers, undisciplined, pencils, and careless teachers.
Miss Ellis winced a little at the thought of Mr. Findley. It was the beginning of her second year under his command, and from all indications it was going to be a repetition of her first. Not that Mr. Findley wasn't a good principal. He was young and ambitious, and, with the exception of the National Guard, he put his work above everything. And not only that, he was exceedingly handsome in a neat, refined way—not that it really mattered, of course —and he cut a fine figure in his blue serge suit walking militarily up and down the school corridors and along the streets of Tompkinsville.
But he did have some rather exacting ideas about the way elementary schools should be run—
Thinking of Mr. Findley, Miss Ellis almost forgot her window shades, and that was odd because uniformity of window shades was Number 1 on his list of "musts" for model teachers. They were one of the main reasons why his pre-breakfast constitutional took him past the school. She was halfway down the corridor before she remembered them. She returned hurriedly to her room and lowered the bottom ones to exactly half the height of the bottom windows, and raised the upper ones to exactly half the height of the upper windows. Leaving her room again, she exhaled a little sigh of relief. It had been a narrow escape.
Outside she verified a theory she had been entertaining all afternoon; the weather had turned out to be lovely. It was still lovely, though the dampness of approaching evening was beginning to permeate the hazy air. She strolled down the school walk in the mild September sunlight, thinking of how nice it would be if Mrs. Harper's boarding house was on the other side of town instead of right across the street. She felt like walking. She wanted to walk and walk and walk—
But she couldn't, of course. Not without a sensible reason. Aimless strolling was one of the many behaviorisms which Mr. Findley classified as being "detrimental to the dignity of the faculty." So she simply crossed the street, beneath the big overarching maples, and let herself into Mrs. Harper's enclosed front porch.
Her room was at the end of the upstairs hall, overlooking an expanse of shed roof and a brief vista of backyard. She closed the door quietly, sat down on the bed and took off her shoes. There was time to grade a few compositions before dinner, so she rested the folder on her lap and armed herself with a red pencil.
She reread the first composition and graded it "C Minus." She went on to the next—
We built a tree house and we started a club. ...Only kids living on our block could belong to the club. We called ourselfs the tigers and we lived in our tree house all summer and graded our block from the kids that dident live on it. When those kids came around we climbed down from our tree house and chased them away.
“B.”
This is the way I spent my sumer vacation. I got a new girls too wheeler for my birthday in July and all sumer I rode my too wheeler its a speshul delux too wheeler with a siren a seled beem hedlite a basket and wite side walled tires. The color is read with wite strips. I like my too wheeler its the best one on the street and wen I ride by the other kids are jelus. I rode by them all sumer.
“D.”
My father said Alpha Ophiuchi 14 ought to be a good place to spend our summer vacation and my mother said, all right lets go. And it was. You should see all the blue lakes and the silver mountains! We rematerialized in Whynn the capital, and we rented a cabin on one of the lakes and all summer we sailed on the lake and fished. It was a marvelous summer vacation.
MISS ELLIS frowned. She expected her pupils to evince tendencies toward object-worship and ethnocentrism when she assigned them a composition to write, but she didn't expect them to use the composition as a medium for imaginative literature.
And then her annoyance gave way to amusement. Alpha Ophiuchi 14 indeed! And blue lakes and silver mountains! Smiling, she marked "C Minus" above the title and wrote, "No more Science Fiction please !" in parentheses.
And then she noticed the paper.
It bore little resemblance to the cheap tablet paper which the other compositions were written on. For one thing, it had no lines, and for another thing, it was unusually heavy. But by far the most remarkable feature about it was its rich, bluish texture. Someone's been into their parents' stationery, she thought, and held it up to the light to see the watermark.
Instantly, tiny wire-like fibers materialized around the borders and began to glow. The paper misted and a scene formed behind it—a three dimensional miniature of an exotic lake nestling amid stately silver mountains that rose breathlessly into an awesome cobalt sky. There was a sailboat on the lake, and in the sailboat there were three people—two adults and a little boy.
It was as though the paper had taken the words on its surface anti transformed them into the scene they described. Miss Ellis' hands were shaking when she lowered it to her lap: Immediately the miniature faded away and the paper regained its former opacity. The writing reasserted itself and the borders ceased to glow.
She looked at the name in the upper right hand corner: Lyle Lylequest, Jr., Grade 4. While it was rather early in the semester for her to be able to visualize her pupils merely by seeing their names, she found that she could visualize Lyle Lylequest, Jr. quite easily. And that was odd, because he was just about the most average child in her class, both in his appearance and in his actions. Too average, perhaps.
Miss Ellis shook her head sharply and brought the headlong rush of her thoughts to an abrupt halt. I'm letting my imagination run away with me, she thought. I wonder if I really saw that scene at all. The paper rested innocently on her lap, so innocently that she couldn't resist holding it up to the light again to prove to herself that it really was what she had taken it for in the first place—a sheet of expensive stationery which a small boy had swiped from either his mother's or father's desk to make an impression on his teacher.
Instantly the wire-like fibers leaped into luminescence and the miniature reformed, and this time the cobalt sky seemed more awesome than before—so vast and deep and interminable that Miss Ellis grew cold and frightened just looking at it. She jerked the paper out of the light and dropped it on the bed. She got up and went over to the window and looked out at the prosaic shed roof and the perfectly ordinary backyard.
There was a reassuring quality about the afternoon sunlight, a friendliness about the hazy September sky. Gradually her fright left her. I'm behaving like a silly over-imaginative schoolgirl, she thought. I'll bet if I showed that sheet of paper to Lyle's parents and told them what I'm thinking, they'd laugh their heads off.
And then the thought struck her—why not show it to them? Why not ask them about it, just to see what they'd say? And why not tonight? That coarse comic, Tippy Charm, was on TV, and she certainly didn't want to watch him, and as for the "How I Spent My 'Summer Vacation" compositions, she'd have plenty of time to grade them when she got back.
II
THE LYLEQUESTS lived in an average residential section. There was a light burning on the old fashioned front porch and another one shining in the big living room window. Miss Ellis paid the cab driver and walked up the spiraea-bordered walk to the porch. She climbed the steps a little timidly and rang the doorbell.
Presently a tall, willowy man opened the door and regarded her rather blankly with faded blue eyes. He was quite young and his features were pleasant in an unspectacular kind of way. He looked like a person who was a little bewildered by the events transpiring in the world around him—in other words, an average citizen.
For a moment Miss Ellis felt ridiculous. Then she remembered the cobalt sky. "Mr. Lylequest?" she asked.
"Yes?"
"I'm Miss Ellis, Lyle's teacher. I—I'm afraid I'm being rather officious, Mr, Lylequest, but there's something I'd like to discuss with you about Lyle."
Mr. Lylequest's eyes carne gradually to life. "Come in, please" he said. "I hope Lyle hasn't done anything serious."
"Oh, no, nothing like that.” Miss Ellis preceded him into the hall. "You see, yesterday I gave my class a composition to write as, their first homework assignment —you know, the usual one about how they spent their summer vacation—and this afternoon, when I was reading Lyle's, I couldn't help but notice the kind of paper he'd used."
Mr. Lylequest paused in the-hall. "What kind of paper did he use?"
"I— I thought at first it was simply an expensive variety of stationery. But when I held it up to the light to see what make it was it formed a picture of the scene he'd described in his composition. I was kind of upset. I mean, the scene was so strange, so— Perhaps' I'd better show it to you. I have it right here." She fumbled in her puree, found the composition and handed it to him.
A small woman with tiny, exquisite features suddenly appeared in the living room doorway. "Stationery?" she said sharply. She would have been beautiful, Miss Ellis thought, if it hadn't been for her complexion. Her diminutive face was positively gray.
But so was Mr. Lylequest's, Miss Ellis noticed, though it was funny that she hadn't noticed it before. He had unfolded the paper and was holding it up to the hall light. His blue eyes weren't in the least faded now. She began to feel uncomfortable.
PRESENTLY he lowered the paper and read the words on its surface. He raised his eyes to the woman in the doorway. "Lylla, this is Miss Ellis, Lyle's teacher. " He turned to Miss Ellis. "Miss Ellis, this is my wife.''
"How do you do, Miss Ellis. Did you say something about stationery ?"
"How do you do," Miss Ellis said. "I was just showing Mr. Lylequest Lyle's composition. I—I was curious about the paper he used."
Mrs. Lylequest seemed to flutter in the doorway. "Let me see!" she said. She fairly snatched the composition out of her husband's hands and held it up to the light. "Why—why, it's a sheet of our novelty stationery! Our—our stereoscopic stationery!" She lowered the paper and hastily read the composition. She seemed to flutter again. "Why—such a silly way to describe it!" she said, looking intently at Miss Ellis.
Miss Ellis was confused. "Describe what?"
"Why the mountain lake scene of course! He's made up an imaginary vacation to match the stereo picture. Alpha Ophiuchi 14!" She turned to her husband. "What in the world is Alpha Ophiuchi 14?"
"Sounds like it might be a star," Mr. Lylequest said vaguely.
"A star!" Mrs. Lylequest laughed. It was rather thin laughter, Miss Ellis thought. "Imagine him putting one of our pretty little stereo lakes on a star!"
"But thought—" Miss Ellis began.
"Mr. Lylequest bought the stationery last time he was in the city. Didn't you, dear?"
"Why yes, yes I did," Mr. Lylequest said. "I noticed it in some little out of the way novelty shop—I've forgotten just what street it was on. I thought it was rather clever, so I picked it up."
"Oh," Miss Ellis said. It was such a simple explanation, and here she'd been thinking—She felt her face grow warm. And yet there had been something uncanny about that cobalt sky, something frightening. A thought occurred to her. "Do you have any more of the stationery?" she asked.
"Oh yes, lots of it," Mr. Lylequest said. “We—“
"It's all the same though," Mrs. Lyle-quest interrupted. "So there wouldn't be any point in our showing it to you. We're being terribly rude, Miss Ellis, keeping you out here in the hall like this. Won't you come in and sit down?"
"Why yes, thank you," Miss Ellis said. "But I can only stay a little while."
The living room was spacious and informal. Lyle was sitting at one end of the studio couch that faced the television set, reading a comic book. He looked up.
"Hello, Miss Ellis," he said.
"Hello, Lyle." Diffidently she sat down on the opposite end of the couch. "I feel kind of guilty breaking in on you people like this," she said, "bothering, you about such an inconsequential matter.” Nervously her eyes went from Mrs. Lylequest, who had sat down beside her, to Mr. Lylequest, who was in the process, of sitting down in an adjacent armchair, to the floor, to the television screen. "Why," she said in sudden surprise, "what program is that?"
THE SCENE in progress was unusual, to say the least. It consisted, as far as Miss Ellis could ascertain, of a many-sided geometric figure moving erratically before several ranks of similar, though much smaller, figures. As she watched, the foremost figure subtly added another side to the accompaniment of a series of noises that sounded like arithmetic set to music. One by one the other figures followed suit. By that time Mr. Lylequest, his chair forgotten, was bending over the dials, and when he straightened up again there was nothing on the screen but the moon face of comic Tippy Charm. Mr. Lylequest was staring at Mrs. Lylequest—rather desperately, it seemed to Miss Ellis—and Mrs. Lylequest was staring back at him, her gray complexion more noticeable than ever. Mr. Charm's jokes had scarcely any effect upon the silence that crept into the room.
"It—it seemed almost like a foreign station," Miss Ellis said presently. "Do you have a special antenna?"
Mr. Lylequest turned toward her slowly. 'His willowy body seemed to relax. "Why yes, Miss as a matter of fact we do," he said. He came over and resumed the process of sitting in the armchair. This time he made it. "We pick up some of the weirdest stations sometimes," he went on. "I can't imagine where they originate from."
"That one was certainly weird enough," Miss Ellis said.
Mrs. Lylequest emitted a thin laugh. "Wasn't it though?" She turned to Lyle whose button of a nose was buried in the comic book. "Don't you think it's time you went to bed, dear?"
Lyle got up dutifully. "Yes, Mother," he said.
"Your father's going to have a talk with you in the morning about that sheet of stationery you took out of his desk. Whatever made you do such a thing?"
Lyle's round face was expressionless. "I'm sorry, Mother. I needed some paper and that was all I could find." He proceeded to kiss Mr. and Mrs. Lylequest good night—somewhat distastefully, Miss Ellis thought. "Good night, Mother, Good night. Dad," he said. He paused in front of Miss Ellis, and looking into his big brown eyes she had the absurd notion that deep inside of him he was laughing at her. Abruptly he said, "Good night, Miss Ellis," and ran out of the room. She heard the clatter of his footsteps as he climbed the hall stairs.
"I can't understand his taking that stationery," Mr. Lylequest said. "Ordinarily he never does anything he shouldn't."
"It's the most unusual stationery I've ever seen," Miss Ellis said. "I still can't get over 'it. I wonder—"
"How is school going this year, Miss Ellis?" Mrs. Lylequest asked.
"Why, rather well so far. Oh, we've had the usual confusion, of course, but Mr. Findley says that, taking everything into consideration, we've done a pretty efficient job of getting the semester under way."
Mrs. Lylequest leaned forward, her blue eyes bright. "Mr. Findley?"
"Mr. Findley's our elementary school principal," Miss Ellis explained. "He's quite obsessed about efficiency. I don't Mean to say he isn't a nice principal," she went on quickly. "It's just that—well, he's quite enthusiastic over the National Guard and I suppose it's only natural that he should carry over some of his military standards to the elementary school. But that doesn't mean—"
"Is he handsome?" Mrs. Lylequest interrupted.
"Oh yes, he's very hand—" Miss Ellis paused abruptly. She felt her face grow hot. "I mean,'' she amended, "he makes a very fine looking principal. He's always so neat and good look— I mean—"
"Is he married?"
"Oh no!" She almost recoiled before the calculating look that leaped into Mrs. Lylequest's eyes.
Mrs. Lylequest's face had lost its grayness. It was radiant now. "How old is he?"
"I—I'm really not sure. About twenty-nine or thirty, I think. I—I guess I'd better go now. It's getting kind of late and I have quite a few compositions to correct before I go to bed."
"How old are you?"
"Lylla!” Mr. Lylequest said sharply.
"I'm twenty-four," Miss Ellis said coolly. "I wonder if you'd call me a cab, please, Mr. Lylequest?"
"Why of course." Mr. Lylequest got up hastily. "Of course, you really don't have to leave yet," he said, picking up the phone.
"I'm afraid I must," Miss Ellis said.
SHE THOUGHT the cab would never come, but it finally did. She got up hurriedly in the middle of the strained conversation that had followed Mrs. Lylequest's unexpected inquisition, and said good night. Mr. Lylequest accompanied her into the hall. "I'm glad you dropped in do us, Miss Ellis," he said, opening the door for her. "I hope you'll visit us again."
She looked at him uncertainly. His blue eyes were empty. The brightness that had come into them when he had read the composition had already faded away. "Thank you," she said. "Perhaps I will. Good night, Mr.—"
She had no idea what made her glance up the stairs. Lyle was standing in the upstairs hall, looking down at her. There was no reason why the sight of him should have unnerved her, no reason at all. He was just a small, tousle-haired boy clad in ski pajamas, indulging in the most natural childhood pastime in the world—spying on the grown-ups. And yet there was a slight difference.
Small boys are generally awed at the doings of grown-ups.
Lyle seemed amused.
Miss Ellis ran out of the house and down the walk to the cab. "Mrs. Harper's," she told the driver breathlessly. As the cab pulled away she glanced through the rear window at the Lylequest's rooftop. It was too dark for her to get a good view of their antenna, but the view she did get was sufficient to convince her that it wasn't particularly different from Mrs. Harper's antenna. And Mrs. Harper did well to pick up the next county on her set, to say nothing of picking up a foreign country.
And that reminds me, Miss Ellis thought. They didn't return the composition to me either.
III
SHE DECIDED on a hot bath before tackling the rest of the compositions. She lay in the tub for a long time, trying to get the Lylequests out of her mind. In a way, she almost wished she hadn't visited them; she wasn't at all satisfied with Mrs. Lylequest's explanation of the stationery, and now she had two additional enigmas to contend with—Mr. Lylequest's deliberate lie about his TV antenna and Mrs. Lylequest's inexplicable interest in Mr. Findley. And that wasn't even counting Lyle's equally inexplicable amusement.
Resolutely, Miss Ellis stood up in the tub and began to dry herself. I'm just not going to think about them any more tonight, she told herself. I've got enough things to think about without thinking about them. She put on her nightgown and negligee and returned to her room. The compositions were lying on the bed where she had left them that afternoon. For some reason she had even less desire to grade them now than she'd had at school. She made up her mind that hereafter she would get her work done in the classroom regardless of its oppressive atmosphere and omnipresent window shades. But hereafter wasn't tonight. Wearily she pulled the room's only table over to the edge of the bed, placed the compositions on the table and sat down on Mrs. Harper's faded counterpane. Determinedly she gripped her red pencil—
My mother said not to play with Freddy next door so last summer I minded my mother and pretended not to see Freddy when he hollered at me from the fence. Then my mother came out one day and chased Freddy away. I was glad, yet I was sad to in a way. But my mother said I should not play with little boys with snotty noses, that I should practice my lessons on the piano instead. So all summer I practiced Czerny on the piano. My mother says that some day I will be a great pianist.
And perhaps she will, Miss Ellis thought. She'll certainly need to be to make up for all her lost childish laughter and all the summer afternoons she'll never get to know.
"A," she wrote.
She was relieved when she finally came to the last composition—
I had a good time on my summer vacation after all. My father said he was going to take me fishing up to canada and I saved my money all winter and bought a new fishing rod and a new real. Then my father said he couldent make it and he bought me a dog instead. At first I was real mad but then I thought of teeching the dog tricks. It was a dumb dog but Im a good teecher. I made him sit up and ly down and walk on to legs. I call the dog Bum. He likes me. Every time he sees me he gets down and crawls up to me on his belly and wags his tale.
MISS ELLIS sat there quietly for a longtime. After awhile she leaned forward and wrote "C Minus" above the title. She shuddered.
She was tired, but for some reason she didn't feel like going to bed. She wanted to get dressed and go out and walk along the cool deserted streets in the autumn quietness, to lose herself the way she sometimes did in summer on her father's farm, and become a part of the earth and the sky and the moment.
But she couldn't of course. Not as long as Mr. Findley was her commanding officer.
She pushed the table back to its accustomed place against the wall. She returned the compositions to the Manila folder and laid the folder on the table. She turned out the light and slipped out of her negligee.
A WORD ABOUT THIS ISSUE
TEACHER'S colleges give courses in Elementary, Secondary and Collegiate-level education. They teach teachers to teach. They formulate methods of dealing with sluggish brains, recalcitrant personalities, and even psychotic and criminal types. On the side, student teachers may take up boxing, hypnotism, judo and barroom sluggery in order to protect themselves against the more "mischevious" of their future pupils. But you'll agree that Miss Ellis in AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER faces a problem that no amount of study, even on Ph.D. level, can solve.
Bryce Walton's AWAKENING deals with different type of education—the education of an individual as to the actual worth of his—pardon, her—pardon, its society! During the course of this education, a truly touching and significant story unfolds; one which will convince many readers that Walton is rapidly moving to the top of the class as a writer of serious fiction.
Murray Leinster is his old dependable self in WHITE SPOT, an adventure, that moves through a terrifying world where everything is dead—everything, that is, but the White Spot. And what is the White Spot? It's the most terrifying "villain" we've come across in a long time; its an omnivorous, omnipotent thing that puny humans can't possibly stand up to. But they do.
You'll like our short stories, too. Read on and see!
—The Editor
She lay there in the darkness and thought of simple, reassuring things: of the artless little stories in the fourth grade reader; of the books she had read when she was a little girl—of the "Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's" and "The Bobbsey Twins on the Deep Blue Sea"; of the lovely little villages the bus had passed through on the trip back to Tompkinsville; of the way poplar trees twinkle in a summer wind
But it didn't do any good. The Dream just waited patiently till sleep touched her, then it leaped from the jumbled ambuscade of her subconscious.
It was its first appearance of the semester, but it began the way it always had the year before. Mr. Findley left his house and started around the block on his pre-breakfast constitutional. There was no intimation that a new episode had been added until after he turned down the street that led past the school. Then the dog appeared from somewhere and crawled up to him, wagging its tail.
Mr. Findley stopped when he saw it. He regarded it contemplatively. "Sit up," he said presently. The dog looked up at him with meek brown eyes. "Sit up," Mr. Findley said again. The dog continued to lie there; wagging its tail. (Sit up, Miss Ellis pleaded. Dear God, please make it sit up!) "Sit up!" Mr. Findley said for the last time. Abruptly his foot lashed out and the dog rolled over and over. Miss Ellis thought it would never stop rolling. Finally, though, it managed to scramble to its feet. It ran away then, screaming.
The rest of the Dream followed the usual pattern. Mr. Findley walked past the school, scrutinizing the window shades. He began with the third floor, like he always did, saving the first till the last. Symmetry prevailed on the third floor. On the second. Mr. Findley's eyes began a slow, deliberate traversal of the first. Stopped. There was something appallingly wrong with the second sequence. Instead of symmetry, stark dishevelment prevailed. One of the shades had been lowered all the way, another had been raised all the way. The remaining ones hadn't even been unrolled. Mr. Findley stopped in his tracks. He whipped out his little black notebook and made a vicious little entry. "Miss Ellis," he wrote stabbingly. "Insubordination—"
Miss Ellis was sitting up in bed. She was trembling. Mentally she ran across the street to the school and down the corridor, to her room. She imagined lowering each bottom shade to half the height of each bottom window, and raising each upper shade to half the height of each upper window.
Finally, when she was absolutely sure, she lay back upon the sweat-soaked sheets and the damp pillow.
It was hours before she got to sleep again.
IV
THE FOLLOWING morning when she left the house Miss Ellis had an idea... I know what I'll do, she decided, crossing the street beneath the big overarching maples; I'll give the class a word association test.
It was a scintillating. September day and the warm sunlight dancing on the school windows and lying whitely on the school walks made her suspicions of the Lylequests seem a little fanciful. But just the same, a word association test won't do any harm, she told herself, hurrying clown the corridor. Maybe I'll find out where they really did spend their vacation.
All of her pupils were present when she entered the classroom. No matter how hard she tried she could never start the day early; there were so many last minute things to do—lipstick (she was never sure just how much to use), a touch of rouge (the merest touch), and then her hair was never right and it always took her last precious moments to pat it into a semblance of conventionality. Arising a little earlier would have helped of course, but how could you get up early when you've hardly slept at all?
Mr. Findley had a brisk "Good morning" for her when he stopped in on his morning rounds. He seemed even more handsome than usual in his neat blue serge suit. A speckless white handkerchief peeped geometrically put of his breast pocket and his dark hair positively gleamed. Thinking of the Dream; Miss Ellis couldn't meet his eyes. She felt ashamed—and a little bit desperate.
After he had gone she began the word association test. "Take a clean sheet of paper and write name and grade in the upper right hand corner," she told her pupils. "Number the first five lines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now, as soon as I say the first word, I want you to write down another word that it makes you think of after the numeral 'one.' Ready?
"Paper," she said, glancing at Lyle Lylequest.
There was a flurry of pencils.
"Now the second word. Write down the word it makes you think of after the numeral 'two.' Desk."
She saved the most important word till the last. She said it nonchalantly, not looking at Lyle: "Vacation." Then she collected the papers, making sure that Lyle's was among the first that she picked up, just in case he decided to make any last minute alterations.
She didn't really think he would, of course.
When she sat down behind her desk she discovered that her hands were trembling, and she forced herself to read the papers in order in an effort to calm herself. Most of her pupils, she found, had associated "pencil" with "paper," "work" with "desk," "love" with "mother," "Milton Berle" or "Howdy Doody" with "television," and "farm," "beach," "camp-in-the-woods," etc. with "vacation."
Presently the familiar Lyle Lylequest, Jr., Grade 4 came into view. Miss Ellis was almost afraid to read the five neatly-written words that stared innocently up at her. After she did read them her hands were trembling worse than before.
Lyle had associated "transmutation" with "paper," "love" with "desk," "work” with "mother," and "ballet" with "television."
After the numeral corresponding to "vacation" he had written "Alpha Opchiuchi 14."
Gradually Miss Ellis' fright gave way to anger. Was Lyle trying to annoy her? She stole a glance at him, half expecting to see amusement in his eyes. But he was a picture of innocence sitting there behind his little desk, and if there was anything in his eyes at all, it was respect—the natural respect you'd expect any normal fourth grade pupil to evince in the presence of his teacher, with a little bit added.
But why should he have such preposterous associations? She could understand his associating "transmutation" with "paper," though it was a rather large word for a little boy to contain in his vocabulary and it certainly conflicted with Mrs. Lylequest's explanation of the stationery. But why should he associate "ballet" with "television"? Except for a dash of Maria Tallchief now and then, TV didn't go in much for ballet. It was more of a medium for Arthur Murray. And why, of all things, should he associate "work" with "mother"? Well, perhaps Mrs. Lylequest made him wipe the dishes how and then, Miss Ellis thought. But still, it wasn't natural.
And it definitely wasn't natural for him to associate "Alphao Ophiuchi 14" with "vacation."
Unless you assumed that he read science fiction from morning to night and lived in a universe all of his own. And you virtually had to assume it because the only alternative was ,to admit that the Lylequests really were—
Probably, Miss Ellis interrupted the precipitate rush of her thoughts, he'd write a composition about being a spaceman on the Alpha Ophiuchi 14 Sol 3 Run if I gave him half a chance. And then the thought occurred to her—why not give him the chance ? If he borrowed some more of his parents' stationery, so much the better, because if the stationery was capable of creating a scene out of deep space she'd know once and for all whether she was dealing with a daydreaming little boy or a—
She stood up abruptly. "Get out your assignment notebooks," she told her pupils. "I'm going to give you part of tomorrow's homework assignment now."
There was a prolonged rustling of papers followed by eight rows of upturned attentive faces. "For tomorrow," Miss Ellis said, "I want each of you to write a short composition titled, .'What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.' "
IT WAS one thing to be brave in the morning with the bright sunshine streaming reassuringly all around you, but it was quite another thing to be brave in the afternoon with the last pupil departed and the classroom once again acquiring some of the oppressive shadings of a Dostoevski setting.
What if he does use his parents' stationery, Miss Ellis thought. Suppose he does write a composition about wanting to be a spaceman on the Alpha Ophiuchi 14 Sol 3 Run; or describe some equally fantastic ambition? What kind of a picture will I see?
Suppose the Lylequests really do turn out to be—to be aliens!
But that's impossible, she told herself. Utterly impossible! Things like that happen in those silly movies they make now and then. They don't happen in real life. They don't happen in the fourth grade of a little elementary school in a small town. They just can't happen in Tompkinsville.
But suppose. Just suppose.
I really should tell someone about it, she decided. Just in case.
But it was one thing to decide to tell someone and quite another thing to decide whom to tell. She thought of Miss Tingue, the ascetic fifth grade teacher. She shook her head. Miss Tingue wasn't the type of person you confided in for the simple reason that you could never get past the barrier of her bleak countenance. There was Miss Averill, of course, the other fourth grade teacher. Miss Ellis shook her head again. She had always felt uncomfortable in the scintillating presence of Miss Averill and she couldn't imagine talking to her about anything more complex than the latest Gregory Peck movie.
Suddenly. Mr. Findley stepped into her mind.
The reaction that occurred was as bewildering to Miss Ellis as it would have been to Mr. Findley, had he been present physically. She had an overwhelming urge to run to him and tell him everything; to cling to him and feel his blue serge lapel against her cheek, his staunch shoulders reassuringly close: And before she was fully aware of what she was doing she found herself running down the corridor to his office, and raising her hand to knock on his austere paneled door.
But her hand did not descend. As she stood there poised, her heart pounding, she had a vivid vision of Mr. Findley sitting militarily behind his barren desk, a practical-minded captain just waiting for some overimaginative PFC to barge into his sanctum sanctorum and disturb the dignified echelons of his thoughts with some improbable story about flying saucers landing on the parade ground and Martians raiding the PX.
She shrank back from the door. Just as she did so the door opened. She was off balance anyway, and the slight impetus which the door lent her when it struck her shoulder was enough. She sat down rather forcibly on the corridor floor.
For a moment she was too shocked to move. With horrified eyes she watched Mr. Findley emerge from his office. He stared down at her, his eyes round with astonishment. "Why Miss Ellis," he said. "I'm terribly sorry. I had no idea you were standing there."
He helped her to her feet, acting as though he were handling some extremely fragile piece of military paraphernalia. Fortunately, Miss Ellis had landed on the least vulnerable portion of her body and no great damage had been done—except to her dignity.
"Did you want to see me about something Miss Ellis?"
Miss Ellis' face was incandescent. "Oh no, Mr. Findley," she said. "I just happened to be passing when you opened your door." She turned and half ran back to her room. She closed her door tightly and leaned against it.
It was some time before her face cooled and an even longer time before she began to put her desk in order. She straightened the books between the sphinx bookends and made a military echelon of the pencils. She shoved everything that would not lend itself to a geometric pattern into a convenient drawer. Then she went over to the windows and carefully aligned the shades.
She left the school, walked down the school walk and crossed the street beneath the big over-reaching maples. Thinking of Mr. Findley.
TELEVISION was terrible that night and Mrs. Harper's parlor seemed even stuffier than usual. Miss Ellis excused herself in the middle of a program and went upstairs to bed.
She lay there in the darkness and thought of twinkling poplar trees and winding country roads, of the artless little stories in the fourth grade reader and her childhood hooks, of "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue" and the "Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's." And in addition she thought of an experience she'd had when she was a little girl.
It had been late in spring, or perhaps early in summer. She'd had a bad dream and the dream awakened her and she got out of bed and dressed, still half asleep, and ran barefooted out of the house and into the misted morning. The dream accompanied her as she ran across the farm yard and into the fields, and she kept hoping that the sun would come up.
She wanted to see light and life around her, the color of grass and trees, the reassuring blue of sky.
But the sun didn't come up, and she ran on and on, the dew of the fields like ice beneath her feet, turning her feet blue and sending chills up her thin child's legs till her whole body was trembling. Presently she came to the pasture and saw the dim shapes of her father's cows, and heard their lowing, and she climbed the pasture fence. Her feet found a spot where one of the cows had slept and the lingering animal warmth engulfed her. At that very moment, the sun peeped over the distant hills and sent its warm rays streaming through the mist, and what had been a desolate phantasmagoric world a moment before became abruptly an enchanted world flecked with a trillion motes of purest sun-diamonds, a world of warmth and hope and happiness, a world brimming with kindness and security—
She fell asleep, and the Dream returned again.
Mr. Findley didn't care about worlds brimming with kindness and security. He left his doorstep on schedule and started around the block. The dog was right on schedule too, putting in its meek appearance as soon as Mr. Findley turned down the street that led past the school. In fact, there was no intimation at all that the episode's second appearance was going to be any different from its first appearance until after Mr. Findley's third "Sit up!" Then something odd happened to his face. It lost its military self-righteousness for a moment and a quality akin to compassion touched it like a ray of morning sunshine, and instead of kicking the dog he bent over and patted it on the head.
But he was still adamant about the window shades, and after he had scrutinized them he wrote his usual vicious little entry n his little black notebook. "Miss Ellis. Insubordination." And then Miss Ellis was sitting up in bed again, trembling, returning mentally to the school and frenziedly raising and lowering her shades; and afterwards lying in the lonely darkness, through the long lonely hours, trying desperately to sleep.
V
WHEN i grow up i want to be like Maryland Munrow and sing awl dance and be beautiful. i will be in sinascopes and everything and have my picture on magazine covers for people to look at and someone like Jo Demaggo will ask me to mary him and we will live hapier ever after.
Miss Ellis had been late as usual, and the "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up" compositions had been lying on her desk where her pupils had left them. She wanted to riffle through them till she came to a certain one on heavy bluish paper, but she couldn't find the courage. She graded the first one "C" and hurried on to the next, hardly aware of what she was reading.
I am going to be like my father who is a osteopathe. When people come to my ofice I am going to crack their necks and backs and then they will give me mony like they do my father. I dont know what they give my father mony for cracking their necks and backs for but they do, lots of it, so an osteopathe is what I ant going to be when—
Then out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a familiar bluish border. Courage ceased to be a factor as curiosity took over.
When I grow up I want to be a psychotherapist. Not just an ordinary psychotherapist but the kind that specializes in individual regression in subnormal cultures. There are so many sub-normal cultures in the galaxy, particularly in the peripheral sectors, that my race has all it can do to send out enough field workers to apply the necessary corrective measures.
Psycho-therapy was so remote from the description of the Alpha Ophiuchi 14 Sol 3 Run which Miss Ellis had expected that Lyle's composition, despite its potential implications, was almost an anti-climax. Nevertheless, her hands were shaking when she held the paper up to the morning sunlight that was streaming through the windows.
Her hands steadied of their own accord.
For if the composition had been an anticlimax, the three dimensional miniature which the paper created was an anti-anticlimax. It consisted of nothing more than a stereoscopic view of the three Lylequests sitting on the studio couch in their own living room.
She was still staring at it when Mrs. Lylequest entered the classroom, fluttered over to the desk and snatched the paper out of her hands.
"I'm sorry to have been so rude," Mrs. Lylequest said, "but when I discovered that Lyle had been into our stationery again, I simply had to do something about it."
Miss Ellis was standing numbly by her desk. She didn't know what to say.
"I can't understand what's come over him," Mrs. Lylequest went on. "He's never misbehaved before. What did he write about this time?" She glanced at the composition, then held it up to the light. She looked puzzled for a moment.
Presently her cheeks grew pink. "I know what you're thinking," she told Miss Ellis who wasn't thinking anything at all. "As a matter of fact, there were one or two other sets of stereos beside the mountain lake set. I remember them now. And Mr. Lylequest had one set made especially for holiday letters showing the three of us in a group."
Miss Ellis still hadn't found her voice When Mr. Findlay entered the room on his morning rounds. "Good morning, Miss Ellis," he said briskly. He looked In Mrs. Lylequest who was hastily folding the composition and cramming it into her purse, then he looked back at Miss Ellis. "Is something wrong?" he asked.
There was genuine concern in his voice, and in his eyes too, and Miss Ellis almost blurted out the whole fantastic story. However, the analogy of the practical-minded captain and the overimaginative PFC occurred to her just in time, shocking her back do reality. "Oh no, Mr. Findley," she said. "This is Mrs. Lylequest. Her son is one of my pupils. Mrs. Ly1equest, this is Mr. Findley, our elementary school principal."
"How do you do, Mrs. Lylequest." Mrs. Lylequest's eyes grew round; her face became radiant. She looked first at Mr. Findley and then at Miss Ellis. Slowly she nodded her head, as though arriving at a momentous conclusion. "My intuition was right," she said. "You do go together!"
Mr. Findley stared at her, his face attaining a hue that was only a shade less incarnadine than the hue which Miss Ellis face had already attained. "I—I'm happy to have met you; Mrs. Lylequest," he said "Now, if you'll excuse me, please—" He left the room precipitately.
Mrs. Lylequest gazed after him, apparently unaware that she had said anything indiscreet. "He's handsome, isn't he?" she murmured. "Does he stop in to see you every morning at this time?"
Miss Ellis struggled furiously with her embarrassment. "Mr. Findley doesn't stop in to see me,"' she said presently. "He merely inspects the classrooms each morning to see if everything is going all right.”
"But he does stop in at the same time doesn't he?"
"Oh, yes. Mr. Findley's very punctual.”
Mrs. Lylequest nodded again. "Well, I really must be getting home," she said. "I have a lot of work to do if I’m going to—I mean, well, goodby, Miss Ellis."
"Goodby," Miss Ellis said.
SHE THOUGHT about the Lylequest all morning. She was more certain that ever that their stationery was creative, capable of transforming groups of words—concepts—into actual scenes, but at first she was unable to establish any connection between Lyle's latest composition and the scene that had resulted from it.
It wasn't until she was grading the "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up' compositions during the mid-morning study period that the answer occurred to her. It was so logical that she wondered why she hadn't thought of it before.
Judging from the compositions, the main ambition of almost every boy in her class was to imitate his father. Wasn't it reasonable to conclude, then, that Lyle too wished to imitate his father? That whet he had described what he wanted to be when he grew up he had been thinking of his father? And that when the stationery had visualized his words it had also visualized the thought behind his words and had treated an image of Mr. Lylequest in a setting Lyle habitually associated with him—sitting in his own living room in the company of his wife and son?
Mr. Lylequest, then, was a psychotherapist specializing in individual regression in subnormal cultures, and probably Mrs. Lylequest was his assistant. It wasn't difficult for Miss Ellis to isolate the particular subnormal culture they were concerned with at the moment.
The realization was like a clammy breath permeating the modern, sunsplashed classroom.
Aliens!
The word crawled in her mind. Aliens from a distant stellar civilization hiding out in a little town on Earth, pretending to be average, bumbling citizens; sending their child to school as a part of their complex camouflage. Aliens' planning to apply corrective therapy to the picayune minds of men.
Suppose they can't cure us? Miss Ellis ought. We've been psychologically sick for so long maybe we're hopeless. And if they can't cure us, what will they do?
Suddenly she thought of the time during early childhood when her dog had contracted rabies and had run insanely around and around the house, its mouth hideous with froth. She remembered how her father had run for his shotgun, and she remembered what he had told her later when he had finally found her sobbing behind the barn. "Killing it was merciful, honey," he had said. "There was no way we could have cured it. Man is a superior animal, and sometimes he has to pass judgment on inferior animals, for their own good as well is his own."
There was a blinding flash in Miss Ellis' mind as, the world blew up. Bits of debris and bits of people flew in every direction, and the Lylequests, their duty done, sped righteously away to their home sun in their gleaming flying saucer.
It could happen, Miss Ellis thought. If I don’t do something about it, maybe it will happen. But what can I do?
Saving the world, she had to admit, was rather herculean task for an ineffectual fourth grade teacher. When the world needed saving in the science fiction movies there usually was someone around who was competent in such matters—in most cases a young, marriageable M.I.T. graduate with a flair for inventing force fields and disintegrating rays..
What was a fourth grade teacher supposed to do in a similar situation ?
Tell someone, of course.
Tell whom?
Miss Ellis rested her head on her hands. No one will believe me if I tell them, she thought. They'll say I'm crazy, they'll say I'm an over-imaginative spinster, they'll–laugh at me and walk away. And I haven't even got the compositions to show them as evidence.
Her shoulders quivered. It was all she could do to keep from crying. Several inches below her eyes was the childish writing, she had been deciphering when the answer had occurred to her. "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up," she thought. It had seemed like such a good idea yesterday; now it seemed so futile. She had a sudden inane picture of herself standing in the schoolyard, armed with a blackboard, with flying saucers landing all around her. Ironic headlines flashed through her Mind: MISS ELLIS REPULSES ALIENS. VISITORS FROM OUTER SPACE THWARTED BY FOURTH GRADE TEACHER. COURAGEOUS COMPOSITION TEACHER UNCOVERS INSIDIOUS ALIEN PLOT TO DESTROY EARTH.
Composition teacher. Compositions. Miss Ellis raised her head. The young M.I.T. graduate invariably saved the world by utilizing the skills of his profession. A fourth grade teacher couldn't invent a new force field or a disintegrating ray, but just the same she wasn't exactly weaponless.
She could assign her class another composition to write, and if a particular one showed up on the appropriate kind of paper she could hold it as evidence.
Miss Ellis could hardly contain herself. The, possibilities cavorted in her mind. So many titles presented themselves that it was hard to choose just the right one. But finally she had it.
She stood up. "Get out your assignment notebooks," she told her pupils. "For tomorrow I want each of you to write a composition titled, 'The Kind Of Work My Father Does.' "
MISS ELLIS had never visualized herself in the role of World Savior before, and she discovered that the experience was rewarding. All the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon her morale was a stalwart, shining thing.
And then, just after she 'had dismissed her class and her pupils were filing out the door, she happened to glance up from her desk and see Lyle looking at her. If there had been any doubt about the amusement in his deep brown eyes before, there was none now. Moreover, it was a cold amusement, the kind of amusement with which a child might regard a fly from which he has just plucked a wing. It brought Miss Ellis back to the inexorable fact that she was dealing with aliens, and that aliens were on unknown quality.
Lyle only looked at her for a moment, in fact he merely glanced at her, but by the time he had turned away and gone out the door Miss Ellis' morale lay on the floor like a dropped handkerchief. This time Mr. Findley did not step into her mind, he materialized in her mind; and this time she did not run down the corridor, she flew clown the corridor, the analogy of the practical-minded captain and the overimaginative PFC trampled beyond recognition by the frenzied footsteps of her fright. When no brisk "Come in" ensued her importunate knock, she opened the foreboding door and almost fell into the office.
And then she stood just within the door; crestfallen with disappointment. There was no Mr. Findley sitting militarily behind the desk, no Mr. Findley standing in a General MacArthurish pose by the windows; there was no Mr. Findley anywhere. Naturally not, Miss Ellis told herself numbly. Today is Thursday and Thursday night is National Guard Night, and Mr. Findley wouldn't miss a National Guard Meeting any more than a normal man would miss a date with Jane Russell.
She lingered in the empty office, reluctant to leave. There was something reassuring about being near his desk, bleak though it was; something comforting about seeing his swivel chair, his coat rack, his filing cabinets, his speckless, shining windows—
Presently it dawned on her how empty the office really was, that it was the office of a lonely man. She walked timidly around the desk and touched the cold back of the swivel chair. The chair turned slightly beneath her fingers—noiselessly, of course. She walked over to the windows and looked out on a view essentially the same as she obtained from her own windows. It was just as modernistic, and just as bleak.
Standing; by the windows she experienced an odd sense of wrongness. Almost everything around her was right, down to the last meticulous detail, but there was some little thing, somewhere, that wasn't right at all, that was outrageously, incredibly wrong.
After awhile she understood what it was, and simultaneously a burden slipped from her shoulders and a softness pervaded her. She began to laugh. She laughed and laughed and laughed—
In his haste to make the National Guard meeting, Mr. Findley had forgotten to align his window shades!
When she left the school that night, Miss Ellis was careful to forget to align her own shades. . . .
It was frustrating to sit in a stuffy parlor and watch programs like Groucho Marx and Treasury Men In Action when you knew that there were aliens loose in the world. Miss Ellis endured it until 7:30; then she excused herself and went upstairs to her room.
Tomorrow morning I'll have the composition and I'll show it to Mr. Findley and everything will be all right, she told herself as she undressed and slipped between the sheets. Even if it isn't written on the stereoscopic stationery, I'm sure he'll believe me.
And I just hope he says something about my window shades!
She had no sooner turned off the lights when the Lylequests slipped into the room and secreted themselves in the corners. She heard them plotting in the darkness: an atomic bomb here, an atomic bomb there, everywhere an atomic bomb, and pretty soon no Earth, but dust and debris instead, and the galaxy freed from one more subnormal culture and one more job well done by your Psycho-Therapists in Action. . . .
She dreamed that when he left his doorstep and started around the block, Mr. Findley was wearing his officer's sun tans. His captain bars gleamed like microcosmic suns and his campaign ribbons were like a gaudy rainbow splashed geometrically upon his breast. Presently he came to the street that led past the school. There was no dog in sight, but there were three people—a man, a woman, and a little boy—standing on the sidewalk in front of the school. The little boy was pointing to one of the rooms on the first floor (it was easy to tell from the shades whose room it was), and the man was adjusting a bright metallic object. Mr. Findley began to run toward them. The man raised his arm finally, and prepared to throw the object, but Mr. Findley got there in the nick of time. He grabbed the man's arm, spun him around and dropped him with a right cross to the chin. The man staggered to his feet. Mr. Findley dropped him with another right cross, a short, jolting one. The man lay still and the woman and the little boy ran away.
Miss Ellis turned over languorously. Her breathing was deep, even.
VI
IT HAD rained during the night but towards morning the rain had softened into mist. The big overarching maples were dispensing liquid pearls when Miss Ellis crossed the street to the school, and the school walks were wet and gleaming beneath her feet. In the east the sky was overcast and the sun could not break through.
The new compositions were lying on her desk when she entered the classroom. In addition to the compositions there was something else on her desk—an apple.
She wondered which of her pupils had brought it. It was rather early in the season for apples; most of them were still green. But this one wasn't. It was the reddest, ripest, most appetizing apple that Miss Ellis had ever seen.
She picked it up and held it under her nose, breathing its winy fragrance. She simply had to taste it, why she didn't know. Ordinarily she didn't like apples, but this apple—
She took a small bite.
The flavor was tangy, out of this world. I wonder if it's a Baldwin, she thought. Perhaps it's a McIntosh.
She took another bite. A large one.
Finally she remembered the compositions. She sat down behind her desk and laid the apple within easy reach. She glanced surreptitiously at Lyle and was a little shocked to see him watching her intently. I've got to read them in order, she told herself. I can't let him suspect.
She began the first.
My father is a foreman. He tells the men what to do in the factory of which he is the foreman of, and the men do it because they know that if they don't my father will get mad and the men do not want the foreman who is my father to get mad at them.
Miss Ellis could not recall a time when the classroom had seemed so restful. The misted world without seemed to swirl against the windows, its subdued light softening modernistic angles, eliciting gentle curves where no curves had been before.
"B," she wrote dreamily.
She was startled to discover that the next composition was Lyle's. Startled, and disappointed, for he had not used the stereoscopic stationery after all. He had used another kind instead, a thin tenuous variety that was unique in its own right, that seemed to fade away even as she read the words—
My father doesn't do any kind of work. My father is lazy—intellectually and physically lazy. So is my mother. They are by far the worst parent-patients I've ever been assigned to since acquiring my status as psycho-therapist. I tricked them into coming to Earth, hoping they'd be stimulated by a Faustian culture, but all they've done since we got here is mope around the house, gimmicking up the television set so they can watch decadent Polyhedron Ballets from their home planet. I thought a vacation on Alpha Ophiuchi 14 might help them, but it didn't.
It's no fun pretending to be the offspring of two regressives from a subnormal culture, but the best way for a psycho therapist to apply corrective measures to regression is through a simulated parent-child relationship. Sometimes, though, I can't help wishing I were back home on my own world, among humans of my own stature, instead of being constantly coddled by two regressive aliens who are so thoroughly conditioned to think of me as their son that not even their own creative stationery can convince them that I'm not.
And as though being a regressive weren't enough, my mother has turned out to be a hopeless romantic as well. She thinks that all problems must have an emotional solution. I never anticipated, when I gave her and my father this one to solve, that she'd go to such extremes. I thought she'd be content merely to eradicate your memory of the compositions. But not my mother! She's had Mr. Findley on her mind ever since you visited us, and she's bound and determined to make a match. I have to co-operate with her, of course, for she's my patient; that's why I'm writing this on impermanent paper. I hope you haven't tasted her "apple" before reading this composition, as I'd like to complicate my parent's problem even further, but knowing my mother’s proficiency in the visual arts I'm afraid you're already experiencing the first symptoms of her sorcery.
MISS ELLIS was. A delicious languor was stealing over her body and her mind felt oddly blank, I've got some "How I Spent, My Summer Vacation" compositions to grade, she thought. Or have I? She picked up the apple and took another bite; then she got up vaguely and walk over to the windows. The sun was just breaking through the barrier of the eastern cloud banks and its rays were infiltrating the mist. And suddenly the mist was not mist at all, but a trillion motes of pure sun-diamonds!
Dazzled, Miss Ellis turned her eyes back to the sun-drenched classroom just as Mr. Findley entered on his morning rounds. "Good morning, Miss Ellis," he said briskly, window shades written all over his face.
“I have a little matter I'd like to call your attention. This morning, I—''. He paused, his eyes on the apple. "Why what an unusual apple, Miss Ellis. What kind is it?"
Window shades, whether they were aligned or disheveled, were rather inconsequential phenomena when you came to think of it. Suddenly Miss Ellis realized that she loved Mr. Findley, that she had always loved him. It was such a simple beautiful truth that she could not understand why it had never dawned on her before. She walked toward him dreamily. "I don't know what kind of an apple it is. Mr. Findley," she said, "but it's certainly delicious." She held it out to him. "Have a bite?"
Mr. Findley looked nervously around the room as though expecting to see a serpent lurking in one of the corners. Presently his eyes returned to, the apple.
"Why, yes, Miss Ellis," he said. "I believe I will."
He took it out of her hand. He raised it to his mouth.
Unsuspectingly, he took an enormous bite.