“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.

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 probably couldn't help it; he was new in town and did not know how to behave. Those who discussed the matter at the Haven Lunch agreed Mumphry was more to be pitied than disliked. He ran as a partisan Democrat, and the gist of his platform seemed to be that, when it came to a position such as constable, the elected official would have to arrest drunks, speeders, and hooligans; he might even be called upon to arrest a dangerous criminal from time to time and run him up to the county jail. Surely the citizens of Haven weren't going to elect a woman to do such a job, law degree or not, were they?

They were and did. The vote was McCausland 407, Mumphry 9. Of his nine votes, it would be fair to assume he had gotten those of his wife, his brother, his twenty-three-year-old son, and himself. That left five unaccounted for. No one ever “fessed up, but Ruth herself always had an idea that Mr Moran out there on the south end of town had had four more friends than she would have credited him with. Three weeks after the election, Mumphry and his wife left Haven. His son, a nice enough fellow named John, elected to stay, and although he was still, after fourteen years, often referred to as “the new fella,” as in “That new fella, Mumphry, come by to get his haircut this mawnin'; I member when his daddy ran against Ruth and got whipped s'bad?” And since then, Ruth had never been opposed.

The townsfolk had rightly seen her candidacy as a public announcement that her period of mourning was over. One of the things (one among many) the unfortunate Mumphry had failed to understand was that the lopsided vote had been, in part, at least, Haven's way of crying: “Hooray, Ruthie! Welcome back!”

Ralph's death had been sudden and shocking, and it came close-too very damn close-to killing the part of her which was outward and giving. That part softened and complemented the dominant side of her personality, she felt. The dominant side was smart, canny, logical, and-although she hated to admit this last, she knew it was true-sometimes uncharitable.

She came to feel that if that outward and giving side of her nature were to lapse, it would be something like killing Ralph a second time. And so she came back to Haven. Came back to service.

In a small town, even one such person can make a crucial difference in how things are, and in what jargonmeisters are pleased to call “the quality of life”, that person can become, in fact, something very like the heart of the town. Ruth had been well on her way to becoming such a valuable person when her husband died. Two years later-after what seemed in retrospect to be a long, bleak season in hell -she had rediscovered that valuable person, as one might rediscover something moderately wonderful in a dark attic corner-a piece of carnival glass, or a bentwood rocking chair that was still serviceable She held it up to the light, made sure it was unbroken, dusted it, polished it and then returned it to her life. Running for town constable had only been the first step. She could not have said why this seemed so right, but it did-it seemed the perfect way to at the same time remember Ralph and get on with the work of being herself. She thought she would probably find the job both boring and unpleasant… but that had also been true of canvassing for the Cancer Society and serving on the Textbook Selection Committee. Boring and unpleasant did not mean a task was unfruitful, a fact a lot of people seemed not to know, or to willfully ignore. And, she told herself, if she really didn't like it, there was no law to make her stand for re-election. She wanted to serve, not to martyr herself. If she hated it, she would let Mumphry or someone like him have a turn.

But Ruth discovered she liked the job. Among other things, it gave her a chance to put a stop to some nasty goings-on that old John Harley had allowed to continue… and grow.