"Why, it must be spring," she said aloud, "and I've not seen a creek or a river in—how long?"
If she had been allowed to have a son, and that son had been Charley Tencharles, what fun it would have been to leave school every afternoon and be swupped to seashores, to brooks, to mountain peaks, to the moon, to the tiny parks that still remained occasionally in cities.
She sat on her hard straight chair, uncomfortable but unmoving, for a half hour, deep in the reveries that so often beset her now.
And then the beeper on the matter transmitter sounded. With a puzzled frown she got up to press the admittance button.
Little Charley materialized and came out of the wire cage.
"Charley," she cried. "Does your mama know you've come back?"
He didn't answer. He went to stand in front of the straight chair and she followed him, sitting down and putting her hands on his shoulders.
"Charley," she said in her fake stern voice, "you should always ask your mama before you—"
Charley's lips came open but it wasn't Charley's little voice which came out.
"Susan Fiftysusan," said a deep grownup voice, "this is Holmes Oneholmes. Remember? I was one of your pupils forty years or more ago."