And now out comes Mrs Strunk on to her porch, just as Benny completes the murder of the weighing-machine and stands looking down at its scattered insides. ‘Put them back!’ she tells him. ‘Back in the can! Put them back, now! Back! Put them back! Back in the can!’ Her voice rises, falls, in a consciously sweet singsong. She never yells at her children. She has read all the psychology books. She knows that Benny is passing through his Aggressive Phase, right on schedule; it just couldn’t be more normal and healthy. She is well aware that she can be heard clear down the street. It is her right to be heard, for this is the Mothers’ Hour. When Benny finally drops some of the broken parts back into the trash-can, she singsongs ‘Attaboy!’ and goes back smiling into the house.

So Benny wanders off to interfere with three much smaller tots, two boys and a girl, who are trying to dig a hole on the vacant lot between the Strunks and the Garfeins. (Their two houses face the street frontally, wide-openly, in apt contrast to the sidewise privacy of George’s lair.)

On the vacant lot, under the huge old eucalyptus tree, Benny has taken over the digging. He strips off his windbreaker and tosses it to the little girl to hold; then he spits on his hands and picks up the spade. He is someone or other on TV, hunting for buried treasure. These tot-lives are nothing but a medley of such imitations. As soon as they can speak, they start trying to chant the singing commercials.

But now one of the boys – perhaps because Benny’s digging bores him in the same way that Mr Strunk’s scoutmasterish projects bore Benny – strolls off by himself, firing a carbide cannon. George has been over to see Mrs Strunk about this cannon, pleading with her to please explain to the boy’s mother that it is driving him slowly crazy. But Mrs Strunk has no intention of interfering with the anarchy of nature. Smiling evasively, she tells George, ‘I never hear the noise children make – just as long as it’s a happy noise.’