We shook hands, I asked him if he wanted to call up the Missus and come over for dinner, but he said nothanks and we’d certainly get together again soon.

He left, and I wasn’t surprised to see the cup of sugar sitting on an end table where he’d set it down.Nice guy, I thought to myself.

I Then I thought of that staring plant, which he hadn’t explained at all, and some of the worry returned.I shrugged it off. After three weeks I forgot it entirely. But Da Campo and I never got together as he’dsuggested.

At least not at the Civic Center.

Da Campo kept going to the City on the 7:40 and coming back on the 5:35 every day. But somehow, wenever sat together, and never spoke to one another. I made tentative gestures once or twice, but he indicateddisinterest, so I stopped.

Ellie Da Campo would always be waiting at the station, parked a few cars down from Charlotte in herstation wagon, and Clark Da Campo would pop into it and they’d be off before most of the rest of us were off thetrain.

I stopped wondering about the absence of light or life or smoke or anything else around the Da Campohouse. hold, figuring the guy knew what he was doing. I also took pains to caution Jamie to stay strictly off-limits,with or without baseball.

I also stopped wondering because I had enough headaches from the office to take full-time precedence onmy brain-strain.

Then one morning, something changed my careful hands-off policies.

They had to change. My fingers were pushed into the pie forcibly.

I was worried sick over the Gillings business. The Gillings Mills were trying to branch over into territoryheld by another of our Association’s members, trying to buy timber land out from under the other. It looked like adrastic shake-up was in the near offing.

The whole miserable mess had been heaped on me, and I’d not only been losing my Saturdays—and a few