Etta plucked out apples and cold dumplings and some chicken and passed them on a plate.

"The same name. How's that?"

"My mama got the two of us on the same day. So I'm called Dorothy and he's called Toto. That's short for Dorothy." Dorothy had the drumstick.

"Would Toto like some chicken?" Etta asked.

Dorothy nodded yes, with her mouth full. She stared at the woman's pretty face as she held out a strand of chicken for Toto. Dorothy was confused by the woman's height and manner. Dorothy was not entirely sure if she was a child or an adult.

"Are you middle-aged?" Dorothy asked. She did not understand the term. She thought it meant people who were between childhood and adulthood.

"Me?" Etta chuckled. "Why no, I'm twenty years old!"

"Why aren't you bigger?"

"I'm deformed," Etta answered.

Dorothy mulled the word over. "So am I," she decided.

"Oh no, you're not, you're tall and straight and real pretty."

"Am I?"

Etta nodded.

"So are you," Dorothy decided. The long arms and the twisted trunk had resolved themselves into something neutral.

Etta went pink. "Don't talk nonsense," she said.

"You're real pretty. Are you married?"

Etta smiled a secret kind of smile. "I might be someday."

"Everybody should be married," said Dorothy. It appealed to her sense of order.

"Why's that?" Etta asked.

Dorothy shrugged. She didn't know. She just had a picture of people in houses. "Where do you live if you're not married?"

"With my Uncle William."

"Could you marry him?"

Etta chuckled. "I wouldn't want to. There is someone I could marry, though, if you promise not to tell anyone."

Dorothy nodded yes.

"Mr. Reynolds," whispered Etta, and her face went pink again, and she grinned and grinned.