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stirring downstairs. The children … there was a reason to get up, and go on …
    For a moment I closed my eyes, fighting off the phantoms of the night. It was morning. Pixie Toller was coming round with something called the Welcome Wagon. Tonight we were invited to the cookout at Camp Mohigonquin.
There were two focal points of the day. It was more than some days had …
    I shut off my mind, got up and dressed. Tessa, still in her nightie, looked up as I entered the kitchen.
    â€œErrol isn’t here,” she worried. “He didn’t come home last night.”
    â€œThat’s all right.” I wasn’t surprised. “He’ll be along later. Why don’t you run upstairs and get dressed now? We have a new friend coming to see us soon. You want to look nice, don’t you?”
    â€œ I’m dressed,” Timothy pointed out as Tessa darted away.
    â€œThen you’d better sit down and have your breakfast—” I shook cornflakes into the waiting bowls—“before Errol comes along and steals it again.”
    We had just finished eating when I heard the sound of a car drawing up outside and then a horn played the opening bars of the Habañera .
    â€œThat must be Pixie Toller,” I guessed. It sounded like the sort of horn someone called Pixie would have. We went out to greet her.
    â€œOh, Mummy!” Tessa exclaimed.
    â€œCrumbs!” Timothy said.
    Even I binked twice.
    Pixie Toller couldn’t really be eight feet tall but, at first sight, she looked it. And she was carrying a beribboned wicker basket that looked even taller than she did.
    â€œHello! Hello! Hello—and welcome!” She bounded up the steps and set the basket down before us. Now she seemed to have shrunk to a mere seven feet.
    â€œI just love your cute little accent!” she gushed on.
“Even Celia can’t talk like that any more—she’s been here too long. Do you think you could teach it to me? I would adore to pass as English!”
    The mind boggled. She was wearing some sort of glittering jumpsuit. From a headband sprouted shimmering antennæ which quivered with every movement of her head. Her dark glasses were rimmed with mirror fragments, reflecting distorted images of ourselves as we stared at her.
    Behind her, a shooting brake—station wagon, I must learn to say—was painted in iridescent colours vaguely reminiscent of the psychedelic phase of Flower Childhood and blazoned with the legend WELCOME WAGON in Gothic script.
    She bent to make some rearrangement of the flowers spilling out of the wicker basket and, before I could do anything to avert it, Tessa stuck out a tentative forefinger and poked at one shimmering antenna.
    â€œDo you like it?” Pixie Toller straightened with an eager smile and Tessa shrank back. “It’s the latest fashion—Harper’s Bizarre! That’s a joke—” she explained to Tessa’s puzzled frown. “It’s all right to laugh. You’re supposed to.”
    For an uncertain moment Tessa was poised between laughter and tears, then the laughter won. I realized, as the peals of merriment rang out, that I had not heard her laugh like that since John died.
    I looked at Pixie Toller with gratitude, prepared to forgive her any eccentricity in return for the gift of laughter she had bestowed on my daughter. There was more to Pixie Toller than was apparent on the surface.

    Timothy was chuckling. I looked from one child to the other and felt a smile curving my own lips.
    â€œThat’s better,” Pixie said. “And you haven’t even seen what I’ve brought you yet!” She began pulling parcels out from among the flowers in the basket.
    â€œHanson’s Hardware feels that anyone can always use another egg poacher—” She thrust at me a circular package from which protuded a black handle surmounted by a bow. “I’m not supposed to mention that Old Man