“What the fuck are you talking about?” Moran screamed.

“I'm trying to tell you that the courts take a dim view of a man leaving his dog untied so it can bite a woman soliciting for a charitable organization like the American Cancer Society. Put another way, I'm trying to make you see that, in court, they make you pay for acting like an asshole.”

Stunned silence from the other end of the line. Mr Moran's muse had fled forever.

Ruth paused briefly and fought off a wave of faintness as Daggett finished the disinfecting process and put a light sterile bandage on the wound. “If you took me to court, Mr Moran, could my lawyer find someone to testify that your dog had bitten before?”

Silence from the other end of the line.

“Perhaps two someones?”

More silence.

“Perhaps three”

“Fuck you, you highbrow cunt,” Moran said suddenly.

“Well,” Ruth said, “I can't say it's been pleasant talking with you, but listening to you air your views has certainly been instructive. A person sometimes believes she's seen all the way to the bottom of the well of human stupidity, and a reminder that that well apparently has no bottom is sometimes useful. I'm afraid I'll have to hang up now. I'd hoped to canvass six more houses today, but I'm afraid I'll have to put them off. I have to go up to Derry Home Hospital and get some stitches, I'm afraid.”

“I hope they fucking kill you,” Moran said.

“I understand. But do try to help the Cancer Society if you can. We need all the help we can get if we're going to stop cancer in our lifetime. Even ill-tempered, foul-mouthed, idiotic, misbegotten sons of bitches such as yourself can do their part.”

Mr Moran did not sue her. A week later she received a Cancer Society pledge envelope from him, however. He had not stamped it, on purpose, she suspected, so it would be delivered postage-due. Inside was a note and a one dollar bill with a large brown stain on it. I WIPED MY ASS ON THIS, YOU BITCH! the note cried triumphantly. It was written in the large straggling letters of a first-grader with motor control problems. Ruth held the bill by the corner and put it in with the rest of the morning wash. When it came out (clean; among the many other things Mr Moran did not seem to know was that shit washes off), she ironed it. Then it was not only clean, it was crisp-it might have come from the bank only yesterday. She put it in the canvas bank bag where she kept all her collection money. In her record book she noted B. Moran, Amount Contributed: $1. 00.

The Haven Town Library. The Cancer Society. The New England Conference of Small Towns. Ruth served Haven in all these organizations. She was also active in the Methodist church; it was a rare church supper at which there wasn't a Ruth McCausland casserole or a bake-sale at which there wasn't a Ruth McCausland pie or loaf of raisin bread. She had served on the school board and on the school textbook committee.

People said they didn't know how she did it all. When asked directly, she would smile and say she believed busy hands were happy hands. With all of this going on in her life, you would have thought she'd have had no time for hobbies… but she did in fact have two. She loved to read (she particularly enjoyed Bobbi Anderson's westerns; she had all of them, each signed) and she collected dolls.

A psychiatrist would have equated Ruth's doll collection with her unfulfilled wish for children. Ruth, although she did not much hold with psychiatrists, would have agreed. Up to a point, anyway. Whatever the reason, they make me happy, she might have said if this psychiatric viewpoint had been brought to her attention. And I believe that happiness is the exact opposite of sadness, bitterness, and hatred: happiness should remain unexamined as long as possible.

In the early Haven years she and Ralph shared a study upstairs. The house was big enough so each could have had one to himor herself, but they liked to be together in the evenings. The big study had been two rooms before Ralph had knocked out the wall between, creating a space even bigger than the living room downstairs. Ralph had his coin and matchbook collections, a wall of bookshelves (all of Ralph's books were nonfiction, most military history), and an old rolltop desk which Ruth had refinished herself.

For Ruth he made what both came to call “the schoolroom.”

About two years before the headaches began, Ralph saw that Ruth was fast running out of space for her dolls (now there was even a row of them atop her own desk, and they sometimes fell off when she typed). They sat on the stool in the corner, they dangled their small legs nonchalantly from the window-ledges, and still visitors usually had to hold three or four on their laps when they took a chair. She had a lot of visitors, too: Ruth was also a notary public, and there was always someone dropping by to have her notarize a bill of sale or frank a promissory note.

So for Christmas that year, Ralph had constructed a dozen small pewlike benches for her dolls. Ruth was delighted. They reminded her of the one-room schoolhouse she had attended at Crosman Corner. She arranged them in neat rows and set the dolls upon them. Ever after, that part of Ruth's study was called the schoolroom.

The following Christmas-his last, although at that point he felt fine. the brain tumor that would kill him no more than a microscopic dot in his head-Ralph gave her another four benches, three new dolls, and a blackboard in scale with the benches. It was all that was needed to complete the amiable schoolroom illusion.

Written on the blackboard were the words

“Dear Teacher, I love you truly-A SECRET ADMIRER.”

Adults were charmed by Ruth's schoolroom. Most children were equally charmed, and Ruth was always happy to see the kids-boys as well as girls-play with the dolls, although some were quite valuable and many of the old ones delicate. Some parents became extremely nervous when they realized their children were playing with a doll from pre-Communist China or one that had belonged to the daughter of Chief Justice John Marshall. Ruth was a kind woman; if she sensed that a child's enjoyment of her dolls was making a parent really uncomfortable, she would take out a Barbie and Ken she kept for such occasions. The children played with these, but listlessly, as if they realized the really good dolls had for some reason been put off-limits. If, however, Ruth sensed a parent was saying no because they felt it was somehow impolite for their kids to play with the grownup lady's toys, she would make it clear that she really didn't mind.

“Ain't you afraid some kid'll break a bunch of them?” Mabel Noyes asked her once. Mabel's Junque-A-Torium was well supplied with signs such as LOVELY TO LOOK AT, DELIGHTFUL TO HOLD, BUT IF YOU BREAK IT, THEN IT'S SOLD. Mabel knew that the doll which had belonged to Justice Marshall's little girl was worth at least six hundred dollars-she had shown a picture of it to a dealer in rare dolls in Boston and he had told her four hundred, so Mabel guessed six as a fair price. Then there was a doll that had belonged to Anna Roosevelt… a genuine Haitian voodoo doll… God knew what else, sitting cheek to cheek and thigh to thigh with such common old things as Raggedy Ann and Andy.

“Not a bit,” Ruth responded. She found Mabel's attitude as puzzling as Mabel found hers. “If God means one of these dolls to be broken, He may break it Himself, or He may send a child to do it. But so far, no child has ever broken one. Oh, a few heads have rolled, and Joe Pell did something to the pull-ring in Mrs Beasley's 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.”