But what could she have to be hostile about? Here she was, an unattractive, unmarried department-store buyer in Cincinnati or Cleveland or some such place. Thanks to Tremaine's doing, she was enjoying the trip of a lifetime: an all-expenses-paid stay at the premier vacation destination of western Alaska. She would be talking about it-and about what M. Audley Tremaine was really like (in person)-for years at her mah-jongg meetings, or wherever such people gathered socially nowadays.

She leaned forward to frown through gargantuan, hexagonal glasses. “One thing I've always wondered is-oh, is it all right to ask something about the survey? Is that permitted?” There it was again; that annoying ability to make a seemingly innocuous question sound like a tongue-in-cheek insult. Our Miss Brooks getting ready to slip one to the high-school principal.

"Of course,” Tremaine said.

"Well, I can't help wondering why it was that Dr. Henckel and Dr. Judd weren't out there with everyone else that day at the glacier. I've always wondered about that. Or shouldn't I ask? If I shouldn't, I'll just shut up. I don't mean I wish they had been there, I just mean…” She trailed off, as she often did, into a macaw-like squawk. “Ha-HAH!"

Ah, was that what was bothering her? The fact that her sister had been cut off at twenty-five while an uncaring Providence had allowed these two overstuffed, middle-aged people who had played it safe to plod comfortably on with their lives? Fine, that was right with him. It was their problem; let them handle it.

As he expected, it was Walter who crumbled first. As all who knew him came sooner or later to learn, Walter's tugboat of a body; his jolly, chuckly, zesty air of enjoying life to the full; and his ruddy complexion (latently apoplectic, if you asked Tremaine) hid a constitution forged in tapioca.

"Well, now, I wouldn't exactly say I stayed behind," Walter said, chuckling on cue.