"Which was the summer
your father's cousin spent her vacation on the farm with you."

Trigger nodded. "Perhaps. I don't remember the time too well."

"Well," Pilch said, "she was a brilliant woman. In some ways. She was
about the age your mother had been when she died. She was very
good-looking. And she was _nice_! She played games with a little girl,
sang to her. Told her stories. Cuddled her."

Trigger blinked. "Did she? I don't--"

"However," said Pilch, "she did not play games with, tell stories to,
cuddle, etcetera, little girls who"--her voice went suddenly thin and
edged--"_come in all filthy and smelling from that dirty, slimy old mud
pond!_"

Trigger looked startled. "You know," she said, "I do believe I remember
her saying that--just that way!"

"You remember it," said Pilch, "now. You never saw her again after that
summer. Your father had good sense. He didn't marry her, as he
apparently intended to do before he saw how she was going to be with
you. You went back to your old mud pond just once more, on your next
vacation. She wasn't there. What had you done? You waded around,
feeling pretty sad. And you stepped on a sharp stick and cut your foot
badly. Sort of a self-punishment."

She flipped over a few pages of some record on her desk. "Now before you
start asking what's interesting about that, I'll run over a few
crossed-in items. Age twelve. There's that Maccadon animal like a
dryland jellyfish--a mingo, isn't it?--that swallowed your kitten."

"The mingo!" Trigger said. "I remember that. I killed it."

"Right. You kicked it apart and pulled out the kitten, but the kitten
was dead and partly digested. You bawled all day and half the night
about that."

"I might have, I suppose."

"You did. Now those are two centering points. There's other stuff
connected with them. No need to go into details. As classes--you've
stepped now and then on things that squirmed or squashed. Bad smells.
Etcetera. How do you feel about plasmoids?"

Trigger wrinkled her nose. "I just think they're unpleasant things. All
except--"

Oops! She checked herself.

"--Repulsive," said Pilch. "It's quite all right about Repulsive. We've
been informed of that supersecret little item you're guarding. If we
hadn't been told, we'd know now, of course. Go ahead."

"Well, it's odd!" Trigger remarked thoughtfully. "I just said I thought
plasmoids were rather unpleasant. But that's the way I used to feel
about them. I don't fe