What could they be like letting their child act like that in a parked car. They couldn't provide a very good home if their children have to go out and neck in a parked car, and with almost a total stranger, that's all I can say. Any parent who would allow such a thing couldn't have too much breeding."

Ralph grinned to himself. "Always the same, she'll never change," he thought as he surveyed his body in the full length mirror. Twisting first one way and then the other, he stretched effortlessly and reached for a shortie robe and grinned back at the reflection gazing at the nude body before it. He opened his door and padded softly to the bath.

"Well, you know you can always tell what kind of people they are by the kind of house they keep," came lilting up the stairs and followed him into the bathroom as he gathered a handful of lingerie and dropped it in the corner. "Yes, I think his name is Jim. I've never talked with the boy, you understand, but he must be a wild one. Why, do you know Maude was telling me . . . Yes, this morning, and she watched out her window. ." The stinging spray of the shower cut off her words and offered a short-lived reprieve from the "BELLITIS” (The name he and his father had given this strange telephone illness).

"Oh yes, Maude . . . how are you again this morning. . . No, not really, just getting my family together for breakfast."

"Ouch," Ralph's own voice punctuated the steam filled bath and made him start. He always seemed to get wrapped up in what she was saying. He found out more about what was going on in the neighborhood before breakfast than most people would find out in the next two weeks. Usually, however, he found himself (as he had this morning) so wrapped up in her conversations that he cut himself.

•

The odor of splashed cologne wafted through the room in perfect harmony with the rasping voice, indeed the voice seemed to be carrying it through the room. "Well, I do know when he moved back from military school, every girl in the neighborhood hung around here for a week. And of course, you remember my telling you about his lying in the back yard with almost no clothes on! Oh, yes, Ralph knows him. I think they met over the back fence just after he came home, but Ralph would never mix with a lot of trash like that. yes, sometimes he rides to school with him, but I think Ralph is feeling sorry for the boy and wants to get him to meet the right crowd. . . . Well, Dear, I've got to feed my little family and present a neat little home for them. You can always tell about people by the way they live. Surely if a person speaks well and has good breeding, they will always be good people and it will show, too.. but, I've told you before, you can tell their kind. . . . Why, do you know she hardly spoke to me in the market the other day!"

She never seemed to get off the phone-it was considered so much her own personal pleasure that it was even listed in her name.

He poured himself a cup of coffee and borrowed a section of the newspaper. He had come in just before the paper had thudded against the front porch. Strange to be there before the news. He had always somehow thought it automatic, like the toaster . . . you opened the screen door and there it was. It was unusual how he had suddenly taken notice of things which he had been taking for granted.

He had never considered a good many things until the last little while. For instance, he had suddenly became aware that the stars stayed out all night. Something new was beginning to stir in him, something he had never dreamed possible. It left him with a warm glow after each new experience and he loved every moment of it.