Nor was there ever any trouble with boys, either. Despite the fact that Karen was developing faster than most girls her age, she did not seem to be preoccupied with boys the way most prematurely developed girls were, but seemed to take everything sweetly in her stride. So much so that occasionally Georgia found herself wondering if Karen thought about sex at all, and if so in what way. They had discussed it briefly, and Georgia knew that her daughter knew where babies came from. But at this pubescent age, girls' ideas about sex changed so rapidly, and they learned to become secretive about their real thoughts – Georgia could remember from her own school days – and, it was difficult to tell what they were thinking, if anything at all.

But she had to be thinking something about sex. It would be abnormal, at her age, and given her development, if she weren't.

Just then Karen glanced out the kitchen window and noticed the dog on the patio, munching on the bone from the lamb roast of two days previous. "Oh, Mother," she exclaimed, "whose dog is that?"

Georgia winced and smiled just a trace self-consciously. "Oh, just a stray. He came scratching up at the door and I gave him a bone and a bowl of milk. Scruffy looking thing, isn't he? It was the only way I could get rid of him."

Karen continued standing at the back door, studying the large shaggy brute. "Oh, but he is a big dog, isn't he, Mother? He looks positively dangerous." An involuntary shiver broke through her pubescent young flesh. She had never seen an animal of such majestic proportions – or one so dirty, wandering the streets on the loose. Once when she was younger – or perhaps several times – the family had been to the Lincoln Park Zoo, and seen the timber wolves kept caged up there. But this animal could put any of them to shame. He had a large, leonine head with dangerous, evil-looking eyes and devilish pointy ears that rose up very high and peaked above his massive skull.