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"Why should they?" said the old man cheerfully. "If I was a beautiful girl, I wouldn’t." He nodded to himself. "Well— anyway, I guess you came home from the wars and settled that score. I guess you told her."

"Ah-h-h," said Fuller. "You can’t make any impression on them."

"I dunno," said Hinkley. "There’s a fine old tradition in the theater: The show must go on. You know, even if you got pneumonia or your baby’s dying, you still put on the show."

"I’m all right," said Fuller. "Who’s complaining? I feel fine."

The old man’s white eyebrows went up. "Who’s talking about you?" he said. "I’m talking about her."

Fuller reddened, mousetrapped by egoism. "She’ll be all right," he said.

"She will?" said Hinkley. "Maybe she will. All I know is, the show’s started at the theater. She’s supposed to be in it and she’s still upstairs."

"She is?" said Fuller, amazed.

"Has been," said Hinkley, "ever since you paddled her and sent her home."

Fuller tried to grin ironically. "Now, isn’t that too bad?" he said. His grin felt queasy and weak. "Well, good-night, Mr. Hinkley."

"Good-night, soldier boy," said Hinkley. "Good-night."

As noon drew near on the next day, the villagers along the main street seemed to grow stupid. Yankee shopkeepers made change lackadaisically, as though money didn’t matter any more. All thoughts were of the great cuckoo clock the firehouse had become. The question was: Had Corporal Fuller broken it or, at noon, would the little door on top fly open, would Susanna appear?

In the drugstore, old Bearse Hinkley fussed with Susanna’s New York papers, rumpling them in his anxiety to make them attractive. They were bait for Susanna.

Moments before noon, Corporal Fuller—the vandal himself—came into the drugstore. On his face was a strange mixture of guilt and soreheadedness. He had spent the better part of the night awake, reviewing his grievances against beautiful women. All they think about is how beautiful they are, he’d said to himself at dawn. They wouldn’t even give you the time of day.

He walked along the row of soda-fountain stools and gave each empty stool a seemingly idle twist. He found the stool that had screeched so loudly the day before. He sat down on it, a monument of righteousness. No one spoke to him.

The fire siren gave its perfunctory wheeze for noon. And then, hearselike, a truck from the express company drove up to the firehouse. Two men got out and climbed the stairs. Susanna’s hungry black cat jumped to the porch railing and arched its back as the expressmen disappeared into Susanna’s room. The cat spat when they staggered out with Susanna’s trunk.

Fuller was shocked. He glanced at Bearse Hinkley, and he saw that the old man’s look of anxiety had become the look of double pneumonia—dizzy, blind, drowning.

"Satisfied, corporal?" said the old man.

"I didn’t tell her to leave," said Fuller.

"You didn’t leave her much choice," said Hinkley.

"What does she care what I think?" said Fuller. "I didn’t know she was such a tender blossom."

The old man touched Fuller’s arm lightly. "We all are, corporal—we all are," he said. "I thought that was one of the few good things about sending a boy off to the Army. I thought that was where he could find out for sure he wasn’t the only tender blossom on earth. Didn’t you find that out?"

"I never thought I was a tender blossom," said Fuller. "I’m sorry it turned out this way, but she asked for it." His head was down. His ears were hot crimson.

"She really scared you stiff, didn’t she?" said Hinkley.

Smiles bloomed on the faces of the small audience that had drawn near on one pretext or another. Fuller appraised the smiles, and found that the old man had left him only one weapon—utterly humorless good citizenship.

"Who’s afraid?" he said stuffily. "I’m not afraid. I just think it’s a problem somebody ought to bring up and discuss."

"It’s sure the one subject nobody gets tired of," said Hinkley.

Fuller’s gaze, which had become a very shifty