"How long's she been working on that bathroom mural?" I asked.

"Since she got back from K.C. Which has been quite a while, now. For the first couple of weeks she had to report back to the mental health people in this area. She's not actually out; she's on probation and receiving out-patient therapy. In fact you could say she's on loan to the outside world."

"Is she better or worse?"

"A lot better. I never told you how bad she got, there in high school before they picked it up on their test. We didn't know what was wrong. Frankly, I thank god for the McHeston Act; if they hadn't picked it up, if she had gone on getting sicker, she'd be either a total schizophrenic paranoid or a dilapidated hebephrenic, by now. Permanently institutionalized for sure."

I said, "She looks so strange."

"What do you think of the tiling?"

"It won't increase the value of the house."

Maury bristled. "Sure it will."

Appearing at the door of the spare room, Pris said, "I asked, _is it off?_" She glowered at us as if she had guessed we were discussing her.

"Yes," Maury said, "unless Jerome turned it back on to discourse about Spinoza with it."

"What's it know?" I asked. "Has it got a lot of spare random useless type facts in it? Because if not my dad won't be interested long."

Pris said, "It has the same facts that the original Edwin M. Stanton had. We researched his life to the nth degree."

I got the two of them out of my bedroom, then took off my clothes and went to bed. Presently I heard Maury say goodnight to his daughter and go off to his own bedroom. And then I heard nothing--except, as I had expected, the snap-snap of tile being cut.