dog who bays the moon might have of the sidereal universe, and yet genuine and recognizable.
And for a moment present time fades out and the boy sits there staring blindly out at the dark earth that strokes for ever past the train, and now he has the watch out and feels it in his hands…. And suddenly Ben is standing there before his vision, smoking, and scowls down through the window of the office at the boy.
He jerks his head in a peremptory gesture: the boy, obedient to his brother’s command, enters the office and stands there waiting at the counter. Ben steps down from the platform in the window, puts the earphones on a table and walks over to the place where the boy is standing. For a moment, scowling fiercely, he stands there looking at the boy across the counter. The scowl deepens, he makes a sudden threatening gesture of his hard white hand as if to strike the boy, but instead he reaches across the counter quickly, seizes the boy by the shoulders, pulls him closer, and with rough but skilful fingers tugs, pulls and jerks the frayed string of neck-tie which the boy is wearing into a more orderly and presentable shape.
The boy starts to go.
“Wait!” says Ben, quietly, in a deliberately off-hand kind of tone. He opens a drawer below the counter, takes out a small square package, and scowling irritably, and without looking at the boy, he thrusts it at him. “Here’s something for you,” he says, and walks away.
“What is it?” The boy takes the package and examines it with a queer numb sense of expectancy and growing joy.
“Why don’t you open it and see?” Ben says, his back still turned, and scowling down into a paper on the desk.
“Open it?” the boy says, staring at him stupidly.
“Yes, open it, fool!” Ben snarls. “It’s not going to bite you!”
While the boy fumbles with the cords that tie the package, Ben prowls over toward the counter with his curious, loping, pigeon-toed stride, leans on it with his elbows and, scowling, begins to look up and down the’want-ad.’columns, while blue, pungent smoke coils slowly from his nostrils. By this time, the boy has taken off the outer wrapping of the package, and is holding a small case, beautifully heavy, of sumptuous blue velvet, in his hands.
“Well, did you look at it?” Ben says, still scowling up and down the’want-ads.’of the paper, without looking at the boy.
The boy finds the spring and presses it, the top opens, inside upon its rich cushion of white satin is
