outside the window. The light moved between the leaves of shadow onto a small battalion of dead ants.

"Wait a min-nut," he said, breaking the word in two, like breaking a switch over his knee. "I work hard, and what thanks do I get for it. . . tired looking jars you take a fancy to and that need the doing over of a whole room!"

"How do you like THAT! Call my vase a JAR. Listen here, Harry, what I do with that vase is my business."

"The hell you say. It's MY money," he said, pointing to the middle button. on his coat. And, pointlessly, "No wonder your kid is the way she is!"

Next day, being Saturday, Edith found her mother at work pushing the couch back against the wall where it had been only a week before, and bringing the floorlamp over to the side of it. "Now don't go getting in my way, her mother panted. "I've been tripping over your dog all morning. Take him for a walk why don't you?"

Although she had decided never to go there again, Edith walked too quickly and found herself too close to the little candy store, in spite of her decision. As Edith came around the corner the young clerk was just going into her bag for the key to open the door.

"Can't you find your key?"

The young woman looked up quickly from the broad expanse of her open, powder-fragrant purse. "But today is SATurday," she said, jumping over words that might have been a greeting. "What are you doing here today of all days?"

Saturday made it different, apparently. The thought reeled about in Edith's head. Why was today Saturday? Today was Saturday because it was the day after Friday and the day before Sunday. No other answer was more pat. "I was just passing," Edith said.

She walked her dog Rollo to the swimming pool in the nearby playground. It was quiet except for the brilliant little shavings of sunlight that drifted on the water. She and Rollo wandered to the coppice where the lady painters were who met once a month. Miss Jasper was among them, breathing heavily, looking intently at the scene before her . . . her nostrils distending . . . her lips pressing white together. There, among the lady painters, some who wore cricket caps and others green sun visors like postal clerks, there, Edith sat among the ladies with their superior little airs and no talent.

Edith knew if she had a brush she could tell them. But, Edith also knew that they would never understand, submerged peacefully, as they were, in the little Lethe of their lives; forbidding to exert understanding where the better self might know the freedom of real life. Their gamut of emotions all neatly conscripted to the preciseness of law regimented to the army of regulation, where prejudice was patterned. Marching. Flawlessly? Almost! To a static victory without glory. And their private little armies were so disciplined, Edith knew, that she would be their enemy.

The thought made a small disturbance in her head, aroused as it was by the whipping Father had given her last night. "For being incorrigible," he'd said, "like your teacher says."

"I'll show you . . . INCORRIGIBLE."

Edith winced, so intense was the thought of the flogging Father had given her the night before.

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