arries on her shoulder is going to fall off of its own accord, and
by then it will be too late--the way it was too late for me when I found
out that the person I'd been running away from all my life was myself in
wolf's clothing."

"Ruf," said Zarathustra, looking up at him with benign golden eyes.
"Ruf-ruf!"

* * * * *

Presently Judith re-appeared, sans apron, and the three of them set
forth into the golden October day. It was Philip's first experience in
evaluating an entire village, but he had a knack for estimating the
worth of property, and by the time noon came around, he had the job half
done. "If you people had made even half an effort to keep your places
up," he told Judith over cold-cut sandwiches and coffee in her living
room, "we could have asked for a third again as much. Why in the world
did you let everything go to pot just because you were moving some place
else?"

She shrugged. "It's hard to get anyone to do housework these days--not
to mention gardening. Besides, in addition to the servant problem,
there's another consideration--human nature. When you've lived in a
shack all your life and you suddenly acquire a palace, you cease caring
very much what the shack looks like."

"Shack!" Philip was indignant. "Why, this house is lovely! Practically
every house you've shown me is lovely. Old, yes--but oldness is an
essential part of the loveliness of houses. If Pfleugersville is on the
order of most housing developments I've seen, you and your neighbors are
going to be good and sorry one of these fine days!"

"But Pfleugersville isn't on the order of most housing developments
you've seen. In fact, it's not a housing development at all. But let's
not go into that. Anyway, we're concerned with Valleyview, not
Pfleugersville."

"Very well," Philip said. "This afternoon should wind things up so far
as the appraising goes."

* * * * *

That evening, after a coffee-less supper--both the gas and the water had
been turned off that afternoon--he totaled up his figures. They made
quite a respectable sum. He looked across the coffee table, which he had
commandeered as a desk, to where Judith, with the dubious help of
Zarathustra, was sorting out a pile of manila envelopes which she had
placed in the middle of the living-room floor. "I'll do my best to sell
everything," he said, "but it's going to be difficult going till we get
a few families liv