"It's his trade," Cecily Putnam answered. "Our men have been carpenters,
or farmers, or even schoolmasters. But an engineer. Phui!"

Simone was washing the dishes, gazing out across the windowsill where
two pink and white Murex shells stood, to the tidy garden beyond where
Nina was engaged in her private games.

She dried the dishes by passing her hand once above each plate or glass,
bringing it to a dry sparkle. It saved wear on the dishtowels, and it
amused her.

"Sam's not home very much," she said in a placating voice. She herself
had grown terrified, since her marriage, that she wouldn't be able to
bear the weight of her past. She felt its power on her and couldn't
carry it. Cecily had brought her up, after her father had disappeared
and her mother had died in an unexplained accident. Daily she saw the
reflection of her failure in the face of her grandmother, who seemed
built of the same seasoned and secure wood as the old Putnam house.
Simone looked at her grandmother, whom she loved, and became a mere
vapor.

"He's not home so much," Simone said.

* * * * *

Her face was small, with a pointed chin, and she had golden-red hair
which she wore loose on her shoulders. Nina, too, had a small face, but
it was neither so pale nor so delicate as her mother's, as if Sam's
tougher substance had filled her out and strengthened her bone
structure. If it was true that she, Simone, was a weak link, then Sam's
strength might have poured into the child, and there would be no more
Putnam family and tradition.

"People don't change that easily," the old woman said.

"But things--" Simone began. The china which had a history of five
generations slipped out of her hands and smashed; Sam's toaster wouldn't
toast or pop up; Simone couldn't even use the telephone for fear of
getting a wrong number, or no number at all.

"Things, things!" her grandmother cried. "It's blood that counts. If the
blood is strong enough, things dissolve. They're just garbage, all those
things, floating on the surface of our history. It's our history that's
deep. That's what counts."

"You're afraid of Sam," the young woman accused.

"Not afraid of any man!" Cecily said, straightening her back. "But I'm
afraid for the child. Sam has no family tradition, no depth, no talent
handed down and perfected. A man with his head full of wheels and
wires."

Simone loved him. She leaned on him and grew about him, and he su