r the only person in the world who understood his problem wholly and
sympathetically. Otherwise he would be completely alone.

Oh yes, he felt that he was quite the bright young man. He was coming
along fine and getting somewhere. His very pleasant experiences in the
house on Martin's Hill had raised him from a boy to a young man; he was
now able to grasp the appreciation of the Big Drive, to understand some
of the reasons why adults acted in the way that they did. He hadn't
managed another late session of sofa with Martha, but there had been
little incidental meetings in the hallway or in the kitchen with the
exchange of kisses, and they'd boldly kissed goodbye at the railroad
station under her mother's smile.

He could not know Janet Fisher's mind, of course. Janet, mother to a girl
entering young womanhood, worried about all of the things that such a
mother worries about and added a couple of things that no other mother
ever had. She could hardly slip her daughter a smooth version of the
birds and the bees and people when she knew full well that Martha had
gone through a yard or so of books on the subject that covered everything
from the advanced medical to the lurid expose and from the salacious to
the ribald. Janet could only hope that her daughter valued her chastity
according to convention despite the natural human curiosity which in
Martha would be multiplied by the girl's advanced education. Janet knew
that young people were marrying younger and younger as the years went on;
she saw young James Holden no longer as a rather odd youngster with
abilities beyond his age. She saw him now as the potential mate for
Martha. And when they embraced and kissed at the station, Janet did not
realize that she was accepting this salute as the natural act of two
sub-adults, rather than a pair of precocious kids.

At any rate, James Holden felt very good. Now he had a girl. He had
acquired one more of the many attitudes of the Age of Maturity.

So James settled down to read his newspaper, and on page three he saw a
photograph and an article that attracted his attention. The photograph
was of a girl no more than seven years old holding a baby at least a year
old. Beside them was a boy of about nine. In the background was a
miserable hovel made of crude lumber and patched windows. This couple and
their baby had been discovered by a geological survey outfit living in
the backwoods hills. Relief, aid, and help were being rushed,