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hurried back from town with his luggage and flourished the last edition of the Wrightsville Record . Frank Lloyd, publisher and editor, had kept his word to Hermione Wright only technically. He had said nothing about Mr Smith in the body of the news item except that he was ‘Mr Ellery Smith of New York.’ But the headline on the story ran:— FAMED AUTHOR TO LIVE IN WRIGHTSVILLE !

4
    The Three Sisters
    Mr Ellery ‘Smith’ was a sensation with the haut monde on the Hill and the local intelligentsia: Miss Aikin, the Librarian, who had studied Greek; Mrs Holmes, who taught Comparative Lit at Wrightsville High; and, of course, Emmeline DuPré, known to the irreverent as the ‘town crier,’ who was nevertheless envied by young and old for having the miraculous good fortune to be his neighbor . Emmy DuPré’s house was on Ellery’s other side. Automobile traffic suddenly increased on the Hill. Interest became so hydra-headed that Ellery would have been unmoved if the Wrightsville Omnibus Company had started running a sightseeing bus to his door. Then there were invitations. To tea, to dinner, to luncheon; and one—from Emmeline DuPré—asking him to breakfast, ‘so that we may discuss the Arts in the coolth of a Soft Morning, before the Dew vanishes from the Sward.’ Ben Danzig, High Village Rental Library and Sundries, said he had never had such a rush on Fine Stationery.
    So Mr Queen began to look forward to escaping with Pat in the mornings, when she would call for him dressed in slacks and a pullover sweater and take him exploring through the County in her little convertible. She knew everybody in Wrightsville and Slocum Township, and introduced him to people named variously O’Halleran, Zimbruski, Johnson, Dowling, Goldberger, Venuti, Jacquard, Wladislaus, and Broadbeck—journeymen machinists, toolers, assembly-line men, farmers, retailers, hired hands, white and black and brown, with children of unduplicated sizes and degrees of cleanliness. In a short time, through the curiously wide acquaintanceship of Miss Wright, Mr Queen’s notebook was rich with funny lingos, dinner-pair details, Saturday-night brawls down on Route 16, square dances and hepcat contests, noon whistles whistling, lots of smoke and laughing and pushing, and the color of America, Wrightsville edition.
    â€˜I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ Ellery said one morning as they returned from Low Village. ‘You seem so much more the country-club, church-social, Younger-Set type of female. How come, Pat?’
    â€˜I’m that, too,’ grinned Pat. ‘But I’m a Sociology Major, or I was—got my degree in June; and I guess I just can’t help practising on the helpless population. If this war keeps up—’
    â€˜Milk Fund?’ asked Ellery vaguely. ‘That sort of thing?’
    â€˜Barbarian! Milk Funds are Muth’s department. My dear man, sociology is concerned with more than calcium for growing bones. It’s the science of civilization. Now take the Zimbruskis—’
    â€˜Spare me,’ moaned Mr Queen, having met the Zimbruskis. ‘By the way, what does Mr Bradford, your local Prosecutor, think of all this, Patty?’
    â€˜Of me and sociology?’
    â€˜Of me and you.’
    â€˜Oh.’ Pat tossed her hair to the wind, looking pleased. ‘Cart’s jealous.’
    â€˜Hmmm. Look here, my little one—’
    â€˜Now don’t start being noble,’ said Pat. ‘Trouble with Cart, he’s taken me for granted too long. We’ve practically grown up together. Do him good to be jealous.’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ smiled Ellery, ‘that I entirely relish the role of love-irritant.’
    â€˜Oh, please!’ Pat was shocked. ‘I like you. And this is more fun.’ Suddenly, with one of her quick sidelong glances: ‘You know what people are saying,