That was it, she thought. It was catching. She wondered where it would strike next.
When they got home that night they found James peacefully asleep. The glass from which he had drunk his milk was in the kitchen sink, along with the knife he had used to spread his jam. He had been a very obedient boy, thought Carrie, and once more her heart warmed to him.
But he had his weaknesses. She realized that the next day when she was once more reminded of the book. It happened in the afternoon, after she had read another of Barbara's letters. Barbara was writing with a frequency little short of amazing. The basketball incident in the college was still the subject of discussion and she just had to tell her mother how exciting things were. But behind that, felt Carrie, there was something else. Barbara was developing a sense of responsibility. She was growing up at last.
Why, it was just a little while ago, the thought, that Barbara was a tiny infant. And now she'll be graduating from college and getting married—and....
It was thus the most natural thing in the world for her to begin planning the details of Barbara's wedding. Maybe it would be a morning wedding, she thought. How many people should they invite? What sort of food should they serve and what arrangements should they make about a reception?
It was these questions that reminded her of the book. The Perfect Hostess would have all the answers if anything would. But where was The Perfect Hostess hiding?
She began to make another search for it. But The Perfect Hostess seemed to be a canny book. It was nowhere she looked, not in the parlor nor in the hallway nor in the bookcases, which she explored in the vain hope that some spasm of neatness had struck her son.
"The little silly must have put it in his own room," she muttered finally. She climbed the stairs to look there.
It was not on any of the shelves with his games or his other books. But when she lifted his pillow, she saw it at last. She opened the cover, and her library card stared her in the face. Then the book opened to the middle, apparently of its own accord, and a dirty thumbprint looked up at her. Obviously, James had been reading The Perfect Hostess. What on earth had got into him to do it?
At that moment she heard the front door slam, and the next moment he was bouncing up the stairs. She turned around and faced him sternly. "James, what do you mean by hiding this book? You told me you put it in the parlor."