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"Dear Jim," he wrote. "What have you been doing with yourself? If you happen to be in the vicinity of Cambridge any night next week, how about coming to Martin House and having a chat about books over a mug of beer? I still read Collier's and Liberty and the Saturday Evening Post. I must, you know."

My Cousin Clothilde was in the dining room just then, and I was finishing breakfast, a meal which lasted almost indefinitely at Wickford Point.

"I've had a letter from Allen Southby," I said.

"Have you?" she answered. "Who is Allen Southby?"

"A critic," I answered. "He wrote The Transcendent Curve."

"What is The Transcendent Curve?" she asked. "Is it a book on sex?"

"No," I told her, "not exactly."

She sighed and handed me a paper. "I wish you'd read this," she said. "I don't understand it. It's a letter from the bank."

"It says you've overdrawn your account again," I told her, "for the second time this month."

"Give me a match, please," she said. "Not that box, it only has burnt matches in it. The other box, just there." She reached for a package of cigarettes beside her plate and shook it. "We never have any cigarettes in the house," she said. "Someone always takes them." I gave her one of mine and she lighted it. "The bank is wrong," she said. "I sent them a hundred dollars last week. It's stupid of them to be so annoying, but it doesn't make much difference, they always let me overdraw."