to one side and himself led
us toward the street.

VII

I would not seem to stress either the saliency or the significance of
these incidents. I simply put them down, after many years, just as they
return to my memory. Memory is sporadic; memory is capricious; memory is
inconsequent, sometimes forgetting the large thing to record the little.
And memory may again prove itself all these, and more, if I attempt to
rescue from the past a children's party.

It was my young sister who "gave" it, as our expression was; parents in
the background, providing the funds and engineering the mechanism, were
not allowed greatly to count. The party was given for my sister's
visitor, a little girl from some small interior town whose name (whether
child's or town's) I have long since forgotten. Raymond was invited, of
course;--"though he isn't very nice to us," as my sister ruefully
observed; and some prompting toward fair play (as I vaguely termed it to
myself) made me suggest Johnny McComas. He came.

There must have been some twenty-five of us--all that our small house
would hold. There were more games than dances; and the games were
largely "kissing" games: "post-office," "clap-in, clap-out," "drop the
handkerchief," and such-like innocent infantilities. Some of us thought
ourselves too old for this sort of thing, and would willingly have left
it to the younger children; but the eager lady from next door, who was
"helping," insisted that we all take part. This is the place for the
Gertrudes and the Adeles, and they were there in good measure, be-bowed
and be-sashed and fluttering about (or romping about) flushed and happy.
And this would be pre-eminently the place for Elsie, Jehiel's
granddaughter and Raymond's cousin. Elsie would naturally be, in the
general scheme, my childhood sweetheart; later, my fiancee; and
ultimately my wife. Such a relationship would help me, of course, to
keep tab more easily on Raymond during the long course of his life. For
instance, at this very party I see her doing a polka with Johnny
McComas, while Raymond (who had been sent to dancing-school, but had
steadfastly refused to "learn") views Johnny with a mixture of envy and
contempt. A year or two later, I see Elsie seated in the twilight at the
head of her grandfather's grandiose front steps, surrounded by boys of
seventeen or eighteen, while Raymond, sent on some errand to his
grandfather's house, picks his way through the crowd to say to himsel