【正文】 , where my fit her was hustling talent for a motionpicture studio. Zooey was thirteen, and Franny was eight. They were both appearing every week on a children39。. At one time or another, I night well bring in here or, rather, in one year or another all the children in our family have been weekly hired39。s a Wise Child39。re the children of vaudevillians, a sect not usually antipathetic to publicity, but my mother had once read a magazine article on the little crosses professional children are obliged to bear their estrangement from normal, presumably desirable society and she took an iron stand on the issue, and never, never wavered. (This is not the time at all to go into the question of whether most, or all, 39。It39。t think I39。m just sick about it. Seymour aside, it means Quonset huts in freezing air bases and boyish passes from our fighting men and those horrible paper things to get sick in on the plane. The point is, Seymour is getting married yes, married, so please pay attention. I can39。t actually know that she39。d ever been analyzed). She told me she just wishes Seymour would relate to more people. In the same breath, said she just loves him, though, etc., etc., and that she used to listen to him religiously all the years lie was on the air. That39。t. I mean it. Mother and Daddy can39。clock, June 4th. Very nonsectarian and Emancipated, at her grandmother39。m going to wire Walt, but I think he39。ll hate 1942 till I die, just on general principles. All my love and see you when I get back. Boo Boo A couple of days after the letter arrived, I was discharged from the hospital, in the custody, so to speak, of about three yards of adhesive tape around my ribs. Then began a very strenuous week39。s39。well, we39。m Helen Silsburn!39。Lohengrin39。. I remember a little dispersed band of unfamiliar faces that surreptitiously turned around, now and then, to sec who was coughing. And I remember that the woman at my right addressed me once again, in the same rather festive whisper. 39。 And I remember the an music veering peculiarly, almost desperately, at one point, from Bach to early Rodgers and Hart. On the whole, though, I39。t quite go without saying, however, that the cars were to be 39。immediate family39。s parting but markedly crisp suggestion, I found myself stationed at the curb, directly at the mouth of the canvas canopy, attending to helping people into cars. How I had been singled out to fill this post deserves some small speculation. So far as I know, the unidentified, middleaged man of action who had picked me for the job hadn39。 seemed scarcely to have begun to thin out, I myself lunged into one of the freshly loaded cars, just as it started to draw away from the curb. In doing it, I hit my head a very audible (perhaps retributive) crack on the roof. One of the occupants of the car was none other than my whispering acquaintance, Helen Silsburn, and she started to offer me her unqualified sympathy. The crack had evidently resounded throughout the car. But at twentythree I was the sort of young man who responds to all public injury of his person, short of a fractured skull, by giving out a hollow, subnormalsounding laugh. The car moved west, directly, as it were, into the open furnace of the lateafternoon sky. It continued west for two blocks, till it reached Madison Avenue, and then it rightangled sharply 5 north. I felt as though we were all being saved from being caught up by the sun39。 and 39。d learned from a certain amount of eavesdropping at the curb, the bride39。s notion that I was getting a strep throat. I sat surreptitiously curling back my tongue and exploring the suspected ailing part. I was staring, as I remember, directly in front of me, at the back of the driver39。s that darling mother of yours? Aren39。s boy. Around the mouth. I tried to show by my expression that it was a mistake anybody could make. Then I went on staring at the back of the driver39。d made a lot of buddies. It was a little difficult for me to swivel in her direction, what with the encasement of adhesive tape around my diaphragm. She nodded. 39。Are you a friend of the bride39。Well, actually, I39。d better not say you39。d like to get my hands on him for about two minutes. Just two minutes, that39。 said a chuckling male voice. And Mrs Silsburn and I turned around again. It was the Matron of Honor39。t begin to fill the bill. It seemed to serve no other purpose than to make my own outsize, regulation headpiece feel rather like a clown39。 he said, addressing Mrs Silsburn and giving another soft, public chuckle. In automatic deference to his rank, I very nearly chuckled right along with him a short, inane, stranger39。 the Matron of Honor said. 39。All right, now, take it easy, take it easy,39。 Mrs Silsburn faced around toward the back of the car again, and favored the Matron of Honor with an all but canonized smile. 39。No. They39。What wouldja done if you had, honey?39。d39。 she insisted. 39。 She spoke with increasing aplomb, as though perceiving that, cued by her husband, the rest of us within earshot were finding something attractively forthright spunky about her sense of justice, however youthful or impractical it might be. 39。t stand to see somebody get away with absolute murder. It makes my blood boil.39。You can39。I39。t even met him. The first I39。s met him,39。s poor father had to take his place, just because his crazy plane couldn39。 The Matron of Honor shuddered eloquently. 39。s always those kind of people that get hurt in the end.... Anyway, so she gets dressed and gets in a cab and sits in some horrible lobby talking with him till quarter to five in the morning.39。What hotel?39。e to meet him in a hotel lobby, rather than at his empty, available apartment. The morality of the invitation was by no means out of character, but it interested me, mildly, noheless. 39。Just some hotel.39。Are you a friend of his?39。 I answered, all but unintelligibly. 39。 said her husband.