“Yes, ma’am?” Sandra looked alertly past Mrs. Snell’s hat.
“Aren’t there any more pickles? I want to bring him a pickle.”
“He et ‘em,” Sandra reported intelligently. “He et ‘em before he went to bed last night. There was only two left.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll get some when I go to the station. I thought maybe I could lure him out of that boat.” Boo Boo shut the refrigerator door and walked over to look out of the lake-front window. “Do we need anything else?” she asked, from the window.
“Just bread.”
“I left your check on the hall table, Mrs. Snell. Thank you.”
“O.K.,” said Mrs. Snell. “I hear Lionel’s supposeta be runnin’ away.” She gave a short laugh.
“Certainly looks that way,” Boo Boo said, and slid her hands into her hip pockets.
“At least he don’t run very far away,” Mrs. Snell said, giving another short laugh.
At the window, Boo Boo changed her position slightly, so that her back wasn’t directly to the two women at the table. “No,” she said, and pushed back some hair behind her ear. She added, purely informatively: “He’s been hitting the road regularly since he was two. But never very hard. I think the farthest he ever got—in the city, at least—was to the Mall in Central Park. Just a couple of blocks from home. The least far—or nearest—he ever got was to the front door of our building. He stuck around to say goodbye to his father.”