Clown', and follow the sound."

"You seem to have survived," Clay said brashly.

"Yeah," Tommy said. "Somewhat battered, but I survived."

"You children!" Lucia put down the paper of sequins. "Papa Tony told me. When he was a little boy six years old, in the old country, his father balanced him on a wire and told him if he fell off he would be beaten, and he was."

Joe chuckled. "Papa never laid a finger on you, Lucia," he said. "Sending you to bed without supper was the furthest he went with you, you spoilt little prima donna. And then only for crying when you took a fall. But me—" he looked down at the circle of watching young people, "when I began ground training as an acrobat, I made my first back somersault with the teeth of a garden rake two inches behind where he told me to land. Man, was I careful!"

Johnny snapped "That kind of brutality doesn't get you anywhere!" "Who's talking about brutality?" Lucia asked, surprised, and Joe said "It got the Santelli family star billing, including you, Johnny."

Angelo got up and went to them. He put a hand on Clay's shoulder and one on Mario's. He said "Clay, some kindness is just softness. Johnny's no good as a trainer because he forgets he wouldn't be any good without the rough training he had, he thinks he can 'get the same results without it. Our family's business is danger. You live with it and sometimes you die with it, and you can't be slipshod. My father was a tyrant to all of us, yes. But he knew how to teach. Just the way Mario taught Tommy-the way he's trying to teach you."

Lucia said, in her beautiful voice, "There is a form of discipline that demands real love, Clay. In our family, we have what outsiders would call a terrible discipline. And yet-" she glanced around the big, crowded room, "none of us try to break loose, once we are old enough to understand it. It is easy to be kind and soft, Clay. So easy, to kid an amateur along and fool him and let him fool himself. But the closer we are to each other, the more we insist on honesty. That's why we almost never work with anyone outside the family, and why anyone in a family act is family."

She looked down at Stella, curled up on the floor beside Johnny's knees. Then, looking across the firelight at Tommy, she smiled and, suddenly, she blinked. Tommy saw a strange little movement in the muscles of her throat. He could see the slow knowledge dawning behind her eyes. She turned over the paper of sequins for a minute, without speaking, and threaded one on her needle. At last she said, quietly and with emphasis, "Clay, we don't give that kind of thing to outsiders. You get it because you're ours, and we love you. And that-that willingness to accept our discipline, is what made Stella one of the family. And-and Tommy, just like one of ourselves." A

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brief silence, all around the fire. Then, breaking the tension, she laughed and thrust the sequin-laden needle into the ruffle of Tessa's tarlatan skirt. "Joey," she said, "do you remember the time I stuck my tongue out at the audience and Papa turned around in time to see me? Oh, murder!"

It was a good evening, with almost the old warmth, Joe and Lucia telling stories of the early days under canvas, Angelo contributing anecdotes of the Mexican circus he had managed for a while, even the bashful Stella adding a couple of animated glimpses of the carnival where, as a child, she had been juggler, magician's helper, acrobat. When they were saying their goodnights, Tommy saw Mario, with the old carelessness, fling his arm around Angelo's shoulder. Angelo smiled, a little stiffly, but did not return the gesture, and Mario, letting his arm drop awkwardly, went out to the car to drive Barbara home.

Tommy, lingering with Stella beside the dying fire, sat silent, watching the girl tacking together a seam in me of Johnny's costumes. Thinking over the evening, he knew many things that even Mario had not yet realized. Some day, even Angelo would come to terms with Mario; gradually shift all of the blame for the things about Mario which he could not accept, on to the handy shoulders of Tommy; the stranger, the outsider. For all of Lucia's gracious (and sincerely meant) words, he knew that Stella was still carrying the major part of the resentment against Johnny's rebellion from the Santelli tradition. In their eyes, it was "That carnival girl he married" who had turned him away from them-forgetting that Stella alone had brought him back to them. By her consistent meekness, Stella had managed to reduce this load of blame to manageable proportions; but she carried it, nevertheless. As Tommy knew, some day, he would be scapegoat for the resentment of Mario's. strange ways.

It was just the way the family was. There had been a time in his teens when Lucia had suggested, half in jest and half, Tommy suspected, in deadly earnest, that he and Barbara should plan on marrying "When you're out of school." Lucia had had her own husband hand-picked by the Santellis, and even now Tommy suspected that Matt Gardner senior, (who had, like his son Mario, taken the family name of Santelli without a second thought,) was remembered by Lucia as much for being her catcher as he was for her husband. What was it old Tonio had said once to him? Our family will swallow you alive, Tommy.

Tommy would not admit, even to himself, that he was jealous of Stella's acknowledged right to be Johnny's scapegoat and to carry the blame for his difference. If a wife put up with things for her husband's sake, if she turned her cheek meekly for his family's sake, she was a good girl and a good wife and respected for that very reason. But a man who put up with all kinds of