sniffed.

"Land! the poor soul is like the barometer you set such store by.
Everything looking clear and peaceful and then suddenlike up she gets,
as she did an hour ago, and grabs her truck and sets out for
Mary-Clare's like she was summoned. Just saying she had to! These are
queer times, brother. I ain't easy in my mind."

"If Jan-an doesn't calm down," Peter muttered, "she may have to be put
somewhere, as Larry Rivers once suggested. Larry hasn't many earmarks
of his pa--but he may have a sense about human ailments."

"Think shame of yourself, Peter Heathcote, to let anything Larry
Rivers says disturb your natural good feelings. Where could we send
Jan-an if we wanted to?" Peter declined to reply and Aunt Polly went
on: "Larry isn't living with Mary-Clare, Peter!" she added. This was a
more significant explosion. Peter turned and his hair seemed to spring
an inch higher around his red, puffy face.

"Where is he living?" he asked. When deeply stirred, Peter went slow
and warily.

"He's hired Peneluna's old shack."

Peter digested this; but found it chaff.

"You got this from Jan-an?"

"I got it from her and from Peneluna. Peter, Peneluna looks and acts
like one of them queer sort of ancient bodies what used to sit on
altars or something, and make remarks that no one was expected to
differ from. She just dropped in this morning and said that Larry
Rivers had taken her shack; was paying for it, too."

"Has, or is going to?" Peter was giving himself time to think.

"Has!" Aunt Polly was pulling her cushions into the cavities of her
tired little body.

"Damn funny!" muttered Peter and added another log. The heat was
growing ferocious. Then, as he eyed his sister: "Better turn in,
Polly. You look scrunched." To look "scrunched" was to look
desperately exhausted. "No use wearing yourself out for--for folks,"
he added with a tenderness in his voice that always brought a peculiar
smile to Polly's eyes.

"I don't see as there is anything else much, brother, to wear one's
self out for."

"Why frazzle yourself for anything?"

"Why shouldn't I? What should I be keeping myself for, Peter? Surely
not for my own satisfaction. No. I always hold if folks want me, then
I'm particularly pleased to be had. As to frazzling, seems like we
only frazzle just _so_ far, then a stitch holds and we get our
breath."

In this mood Polly worried Peter deeply. He could not keep from
looking ahead--he avoided that usually--to a