back, and now all she'll say is something like ---Doyou want to have a shower?", but that's about all the damage that's been done.'
'Well, you'll pardon me if I still think it's an awfully big risk to take with such fragile, irreplaceable things,' Mabel said. She sniffed. 'Sometimes I believe the only thing I've ever learned in my whole life is that children break things.'
'Well, perhaps I've just been lucky. But they are careful with them, you know. Because they love them, I think.' Ruth paused, frowning slightly. 'Most of them do,' she amended after a moment.
That not all children wanted to play with 'the kids in the schoolroom'- that some actually, seemed to fear them - was a fact which puzzled and grieved her. Little Edwina Thurlow, for instance. Edwina had burst into a shrill spate of screams when her mother took her by the hand and actually pulled her over to the dolls on their rows of benches, looking attentively at their blackboard. Mrs Thurlow thought Ruth's dolls were just the dearest things, cunning as a cat a-running, sweet as a lick of cream; if there are other country cliches for fascinating, Mrs Thurlow had undoubtedly applied them to Ruth's dolls, and she was totally unable to credit her daughter's fear of them. She thought Edwina was 'just being shy.' Ruth, who had seen the unmistakable flat glitter of fear in the child's eyes, had been unable to dissuade the mother (who, Ruth thought, was a stupid, pig-headed woman) from almost physically pushing the child at the dolls.
So Norma Thurlow had dragged little Edwina over to the schoolroom and little Edwina's screams had been so loud they had brought Ralph all the way up from the cellar, where he had been caning chairs. It took nearly twenty minutes to coax Edwina out of her hysterics, and of course she had to be brought downstairs, away from the dolls. Norma Thurlow was ill with embarrassment, and every time she threw a black look in Edwina's direction. the child was overcome again by hysterical weeping.
Later that evening, Ruth went upstairs and looked sorrowfully at her schoolroom full of silent children (the 'children' included such grandmotherly figures as Mrs Beasley and Old Gammar Hood, which, when turned over and slightly rearranged, became The Big Bad Wolf), wondering how they could have scared Edwina so badly. Edwina herself certainly hadn't been able to explain; even the most gentle inquiry brought on fresh shrieks of terror.
'You made that kid really unhappy,' Ruth said at last, speaking softly to the dolls. 'What did you do to her?'
The dolls only looked back at her with their glass eyes, their shoebutton eyes, their sewn eyes.
'And Hilly Brown wouldn't go near them the time his mother came over to have you notarize that bill of sale,' Ralph said from behind her. She looked around, startled, then smiled at him.
'Yes, Hilly, too,' she said. And there had been others. Not many, but enough to trouble her.
'Come on,' Ralph said, slipping an arm around her waist. 'Give, you guys. Which one of youse mugs scared the little goil?'
The dolls looked back silently.
And for a moment . . . just a moment ... Ruth felt a stir of fright uncoil in her stomach and chase up her spine, rattling vertebrae like a bony xylophone ... and then it was gone.
'Don't worry about it, Ruthie,' Ralph said. leaning closer. As always, the smell of him made her feel a bit giddy. He kissed her hard. Nor was his kiss the only thing hard about him at that moment.
'Please,' she said a little breathlessly, breaking the kiss. 'Not in front of the children.'
He laughed and swept her into his arms. 'How about in front of the collected works of Henry Steele Commager?'
'Wonderful,' she gasped, aware that she was already half ... no, threequarters ... no, four-fifths ... out of her dress.
He made love to her urgently, and with tremendous satisfaction on both their parts. All their parts. The brief chill was forgotten.
But this year she remembered on the night of July 19th. The picture of Jesus had begun to speak to 'Becka Paulson on July 7th. On July 19th, Ruth McCausland's dolls began to speak to her.
4
The townsfolk were surprised but pleased when, two years after Ralph McCausland's death in 1972, his widow ran for the position of Haven town constable. A young fellow named Mumphry ran against her. This fellow was foolish, most people agreed, but they also agreed that he