“What do they want me for?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but you’d better go right now. Uncle Earn is there with a policeman, and Papa is madder than blazes!”

I felt myself cringing. “I haven’t done anything!”

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about,” Allie said, imitating the smug tones of our older brother, Hugh.

As I rose slowly to my feet, Lan’s eyes narrowed. “I’m coming with you,” he announced suddenly. “So it will be all right.”

Allie cocked her head to one side and eyed him doubtfully. “I don’t know if they want you.”

“I’m still coming,” Lan said.

We walked into the sitting room together, me holding on to Lan’s hand tight as tight. Mama was sitting in the straight-backed chair with the carved arms; Papa was standing by the windows with his hands in his pockets. Uncle Earn was standing just inside the door next to a very uncomfortable-looking man in a blue-and-gold policeman’s uniform. “There!” Uncle Earn said as we came in, stabbing his finger straight at me. “That’s the child. Officer, do what you came here for!”

“And just what is that?” Papa said in the mild tone he used when he was getting ready to lay into one of the older boys about something, but he wasn’t quite certain-sure he had all of the facts in the case just yet. “I’ve yet to hear a clear explanation from you, and until I do, this goes no further.”

“You!” Uncle Earn turned a glare on Papa that would have melted fire irons. Papa just smiled gently, without a particle of yielding. “You,” Uncle Earn said again, “you’ve kept this menace and let her live and grow with no regard to your family or the disgrace and doom she’s sure to bring on us all. Maybe the luck of the seventh son will protect you, but what about the rest of us? And now—”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” the policeman said, “but am I to understand that this is the young lady against whom you lodged your complaint?” He nodded at me, almost friendly, and I felt a tiny bit better.