Runaway

and called on him to do the same. He was surprised at the pale color of it, hardly yellow at all, but he didn’t say anything, supposing Nancy would chide him for ignorance. Then the two girls set the sticky pale lump on a cloth on the table and beat it down with wooden paddles and wrapped the cloth all around it. Tessa lifted a door in the floor and the two of them carried it down some cellar steps he wouldn’t have known were there. Nancy gave a shriek as she almost lost her footing. He had an idea that Tessa could have managed better by herself but that she did not mind giving Nancy some privileges, such as you would give to a pesky, charming child. She let Nancy tidy up the papers on the floor while she herself opened the bottles of lemonade she brought up from the cellar. She got a chunk of ice from a corner icebox, washed some sawdust off it and bashed it up with a hammer, in the sink, so that she could drop some into their glasses. There again he didn’t try to help.
    “Now Tessa,” said Nancy, after a gulp of lemonade. “Now it’s time. Do me a favor. Please do.”
    Tessa drank her lemonade.
    “Tell Ollie,” Nancy said. “Tell him what he’s got in his pockets. Start with the right one.”
    Tessa said, without looking up, “Well, I expect he’s got his wallet.”
    “Oh, go on,” said Nancy.
    “Well, she’s right,” said Ollie. “I’ve got my wallet. Now does she have to guess what’s in it? Because there isn’t much.”
    “Never mind that,” said Nancy. “Tell him what else, Tessa. In his right pocket.”
    “What is this, anyway?” said Ollie.
    “Tessa,” said Nancy sweetly. “Come on, Tessa, you know me. Remember we’re old friends, we’re friends since the first room of school. Just do it for me.”
    “Is this some game?” said Ollie. “Is this some game you thought up between the two of you?”
    Nancy laughed at him.
    “What’s the matter,” she said. “What have you got that you’re ashamed of? Have you a smelly old sock?”
    “A pencil,” said Tessa, very quietly. “Some money. Coins. I can’t tell what value. A piece of paper with some writing on it? Some printing?”
    “Clean it out, Ollie,” cried Nancy. “Clean it out.”
    “Oh, and a stick of gum,” said Tessa. “I think a stick of gum. That’s all.”
    The gum was unwrapped and covered with lint.
    “I’d forgotten that was there,” said Ollie, though he hadn’t. Out came the stub of a pencil, some nickels and coppers, a folded-up, worn clipping from a newspaper.
    “Somebody gave me that,” he said, as Nancy snatched it up and unfolded it.
    “We are in the market for original manuscripts of superior
quality, both poetry and prose,”
she read aloud.
“Serious consideration will be given—”
    Ollie had grabbed it out of her hand.
    “Somebody
gave
me that. They wanted my opinion, whether I thought it was a valid outfit.”
    “Oh, Ollie.”
    “I didn’t even know it was still there. Same with the gum.”
    “Aren’t you surprised?”
    “Of course I am. I’d forgotten.”
    “Aren’t you surprised at Tessa? What she
knew
?”
    Ollie managed a smile for Tessa, though he was hotly disturbed. It was not her fault.
    “It’s what a lot of fellows would have in their pockets,” he said. “Coins? Naturally. Pencil—”
    “Gum?” said Nancy.
    “Possible.”
    “And the paper with the printing. She said
printing.
”
    “She said a piece of paper. She didn’t know what was on it. You didn’t, did you?” he said to Tessa.
    She shook her head. She looked towards the door, listening.
    “I think there’s a car in the lane.”
    She was right. They all heard it now. Nancy went to peek through the curtain and at that moment Tessa gave Ollie an unexpected smile. It was not a smile of complicity or apology or the usual coquetry. It might have been a smile of welcome, but without any explicit invitation. It was just the offering of some warmth, some easy spirit in her. And at the same time there was a movement of her wide shoulders, a peaceable settling there, as if the smile was spreading through her whole self.
    “Oh, shoot,” said Nancy. But she had to get control of her excitement and Ollie of his off-kilter attraction and surprise.
    Tessa opened the door just as a man was getting out of the car. He waited by the gate for Nancy and Ollie to come down the path. He was probably in his sixties, thick-shouldered, serious-faced, wearing a pale summer suit and a Christie hat. His car was a