“There’s no best or safe age for a bachelor anywhere between three and eighty to buy ice cream for a sixteen-year-old girl,” she said. “Forming her mind,” she said. But she sounded just like cream when she talked to Uncle Gavin. No: she didn’t sound like anything because she didn’t say anything. She waited for him to begin it. No: she just waited because she knew he would have to begin it. Because Jefferson was that small. No, I mean Uncle Gavin had lived in Jefferson or in little towns all his life so he not only knew what Jefferson would be saying about him and Linda Snopes and those banana splits and ice cream sodas and books of poetry by now, but that Mother had too many good friends to ever miss hearing about it.

  So she just waited. It was Saturday. Uncle Gavin walked twice in and out of the office (we still called it that because Grandfather had, except when Mother could hear us. Though after a while even she stopped trying to call it the library) where Mother was sitting at the desk adding up something, maybe the laundry; he walked in and out twice and she never moved. Then he said:

  “I was thinking—” Because they were like that. I mean, I thought the reason they were like that was because they were twins. I mean, I assumed that because I didn’t know any other twins to measure them against. She didn’t even stop adding.

  “Of course,” she said. “Why not tomorrow?” So he could have gone out then since obviously both of them knew what the other was talking about. But he said:

  “Thank you.” Then he said to me: “Aint Aleck Sander waiting for you outside?”

  “Fiddlesticks,” Mother said. “Anything he will learn about sixteen-year-old girls from you will probably be a good deal more innocent than what he will learn someday from sixteen-year-old girls. Shall I telephone her mother and ask her to let her come for dinner tomorrow, or do you want to?”

  “Thank you,” Uncle Gavin said. “Do you want me to tell you about it?”

  “Do you want to?” Mother said.

  “Maybe I’d better,” Uncle Gavin said.

  “Do you have to?” Mother said. This time Uncle Gavin didn’t say anything. Then Mother said: “All right. We’re listening.” Again Uncle Gavin didn’t say anything. But now he was Uncle Gavin again. I mean, until now he sounded a good deal like I sounded sometimes. But now he stood looking at the back of Mother’s head, with his shock of white hair that always needed cutting and the stained bitt of the corncob pipe sticking out of his breast pocket and the eyes and the face that you never did quite know what they were going to say next except that when you heard it you realised it was always true, only a little cranksided; that nobody else would have said it quite that way.

  “Well, well,” he said, “if that’s what a mind with no more aptitude for gossip and dirt than yours is inventing and thinking, just imagine what the rest of Jefferson, the experts, have made of it by now. By Cicero, it makes me feel young already; when I go to town this morning I believe I will buy myself a red necktie.” He looked at the back of Mother’s head. “Thank you, Maggie,” he said. “It will need all of us of good will. To save Jefferson from Snopeses is a crisis, an emergency, a duty. To save a Snopes from Snopeses is a privilege, an honor, a pride.”

  “Especially a sixteen-year-old female one,” Mother said. “Yes,” Uncle Gavin said. “Do you deny it?”

  “Have I tried to?” Mother said.

  “Yes, you have tried.” He moved quick and put his hand on the top of her head, still talking. “And bless you for it. Tried always to deny that damned female instinct for uxorious and rigid respectability which is the backbone of any culture not yet decadent, which remains strong and undecadent only so long as it still produces an incorrigible unreconstructable with the temerity to assail and affront and deny it — like you—” and for a second both of us thought he was going to bend down and kiss her; maybe all three of us thought it. Then he didn’t, or anyway Mother said:

  “Stop it. Let me alone. Make up your mind: do you want me to telephone her, or will you do it?”

  “I’ll do it,” he said. He looked at me. “Two red ties: one for you. I wish you were sixteen too. What she needs is a beau.”

  “Then if by being sixteen I’d have to be her beau, I’m glad I’m not sixteen,” I said. “She’s already got a beau. Matt Levitt. He won the Golden Gloves up in Ohio or somewhere last year. He acts like he can still use them. Would like to, too. No, much obliged,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Mother said.

  “Nothing,” Uncle Gavin said.

  “You never saw him box then,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t call him nothing. I saw him once. With Preacher Birdsong.”

  “And just which of your sporting friends is Preacher Bird-song?” Mother said.

  “He aint sporting,” I said. “He lives out in the country. He learned to box in France in the war. He and Matt Levitt—”

  “Let me,” Uncle Gavin said. “He—”

  “Which he?” Mother said. “Your rival?”

  “ — is from Ohio,” Uncle Gavin said. “He graduated from that new Ford mechanic’s school and the company sent him here to be a mechanic in the agency garage—”

  “He’s the one that owns that yellow cut-down racer,” I said. “And Linda rides in it?” Mother said.

  “ — and since Jefferson is not that large and he has two eyes,” Uncle Gavin said, “sooner or later he saw Linda Snopes, probably somewhere between her home and the school house; being male and about twenty-one, he naturally lost no time in making her acquaintance; the Golden Gloves reputation which he either really brought with him or invented somewhere en route, has apparently eliminated what rivals he might have expected — —”

  “Except you,” Mother said.

  “That’s all,” Uncle Gavin said.

  “Except you,” Mother said.

  “He’s maybe five years her senior,” Uncle Gavin said. “I’m twice her age.”

  “Except you,” Mother said. “I dont think you will live long enough to ever be twice any woman’s age, I dont care what it is.”

  “All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “What was it I just said? to save Jefferson from a Snopes is a duty; to save a Snopes from a Snopes is a privilege.”

  “An honor, you said,” Mother said. “A pride.”

  “All right,” Uncle Gavin said. “A joy then. Are you pleased now?” That was all, then. After a while Father came home but Mother didn’t have much to tell him he didn’t already know, so there wasn’t anything for him to do except to keep on needing the wolf whistle that hadn’t been invented yet; not until the next day after dinner in fact.

  She arrived a little after twelve, just about when she could have got here after church if she had been to church. Which maybe she had, since she was wearing a hat. Or maybe it was her mother who made her wear the hat on account of Mother, coming up the street from the corner, running. Then I saw that the hat was a little awry on her head as if something had pulled or jerked at it or it had caught on something in passing, and that she was holding one shoulder with the other hand. Then I saw that her face was mad. It was scared too, but right now it was mostly just mad as she turned in the gate, still holding her shoulder but not running now, just walking fast and hard, the mad look beginning to give way to the scared one. Then they both froze into something completely different because then the car passed, coming up fast from the corner — Matt Levitt’s racer because there were other stripped-down racers around now but his was the only one with that big double-barrel brass horn on the hood that played two notes when he pressed the button, going past fast; and suddenly it was like I had smelled something, caught a whiff of something for a second that even if I located it again I still wouldn’t know whether I had ever smelled it before or not; the racer going on and Linda still walking rigid and fast with her hat on a little crooked and still holding her shoulder and still breathing a little fast even if what was on her face now was mostly being scared, on to the gallery where Mother and Uncle Gavin were waiting.

  “Good morning, Linda,” Mother said. “You’ve torn your sleeve.”

  “It caught on a nail,” Linda said.

  “I can see,” Mother said. “Come on up to my room and slip it off and I’ll tack it back for you.”

  “It’s all right,” Linda said. “If you’ve just got a pin.”

  “Then you take the needle and do it yourself while I see about dinner,” Mother said. “You can sew, cant you?”

  “Yessum,” Linda said. So they went up to Mother’s room and Uncle Gavin and I went to the office so Father could say to Uncle Gavin:

  “Somebody been mauling at her before she could even get here? What’s the matter, boy? Where’s your spear and sword? where’s your white horse?” Because Matt didn’t blow the two-toned horn when he passed that first time so none of us knew yet what Linda was listening for, sitting at the dinner table with the shoulder of her dress sewed back all right but looking like somebody about ten years old had done it and her face still looking rigid and scared. Because we didn’t realise it then. I mean, that she was having to do so many things at once: having to look like she was enjoying her dinner and having to remember her manners in a strange house and with folks that she didn’t have any particular reason to think were going to like her, and still having to wonder what Matt Levitt would do next without letting anybody know that’s what was mainly on her mind. I mean, having to expect what was going to happen next and then, even while it was happening, having to look like she was eating and saying Yessum and Nome to what Mother was saying, and that cut-down racer going past in the street again with that two-toned horn blowing this time, blowing all the way past the house, and Father suddenly jerking his head up and making a loud snuffing noise, saying, “What’s that I smell?”

  “Smell?” Mother said. “Smell what?”

  “That,” Father said. “Something we haven’t smelled around here in … how long was it, Gavin?” Because I knew now what Father meant, even if I wasn’t born then and Cousin Gowan just told me. And Mother knew too. I mean, she remembered, since she had heard the other one when it was Mr de Spain’s cut-out. I mean, even if she didn’t know enough to connect that two-toned horn with Matt Levitt, all she had to do was look at Linda and Uncle Gavin. Or maybe just Uncle Gavin’s face was enough, which is what you get for being twins with anybody. Because she said,

  “Charley,” and Father said:

  “Maybe Miss Snopes will excuse me this time.” He was talking at Linda now. “You see, whenever we have a pretty girl to eat with us, the prettier she is, the harder I try to make jokes so they will want to come back again. This time I just tried too hard. So if Miss Snopes will forgive me for trying too hard to be funny, I’ll forgive her for being too pretty.”

  “Good boy,” Uncle Gavin said. “Even if that one wasn’t on tiptoe, at least it didn’t wear spikes like the joke did. Let’s go out to the gallery where it’s cool, Maggie.”

  “Let’s,” Mother said. Then we were all standing there in the hall, looking at Linda. It wasn’t just being scared in her face now, of being a sixteen-year-old girl for the first time in the home of people that probably had already decided not to approve of her. I didn’t know what it was. But Mother did, maybe because it was Mother she was looking at it with.

  “I think it will be cooler in the parlor,” Mother said. “Let’s go there.” But it was too late. We could hear the horn, not missing a note: da DA da DA da DA getting louder and louder then going past the house still not missing a note as it faded on, and Linda staring at Mother for just another second or two with the desperation. Because it — the desperation — went too; maybe it was something like despair for a moment, but then that was gone too and her face was just rigid again.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said. “I … excuse me, I’ve got …” Then at least she kind of got herself together. “Thank you for my dinner, Mrs Mallison,” she said. “Thank you for my dinner, Mr Mallison. Thank you for my dinner, Mr Gavin,” already moving toward the table where she had put the hat and her purse. But then I hadn’t expected her to thank me for it.

  “Let Gavin drive you home,” Mother said. “Gavin—”

  “No no,” she said. “I dont — he dont—” Then she was gone, out the front door and down the walk toward the gate, almost running again, then through the gate and then she was running, desperate and calm, not looking back. Then she was gone.

  “By Cicero, Gavin,” Father said. “You’re losing ground. Last time you at least picked out a Spanish-American war hero with an E.M.F. sportster. Now the best you can do is a Golden Gloves amateur with a home-made racer. Watch yourself, bud, or next time you’ll have a boy scout defying you to mortal combat with a bicycle.”

  “What?” Mother said.

  “What would you do,” Father said, “if you were a twenty-one-year-old garage mechanic who had to work until six p.m., and a white-headed old grandfather of a libertine was waylaying your girl on her way home from school every afternoon and tolling her into soda dens and plying her with ice cream? Because how could he know that all Gavin wants is just to form her mind?”

  Only it wasn’t every afternoon anymore. It wasn’t any afternoon at all. I dont know what happened, how it was done: whether she sent word to Uncle Gavin not to try to meet her after school or whether she came and went the back way where he wouldn’t see her, or whether maybe she stopped going to school at all for a while. Because she was in high school and I was in grammar school so there was no reason for me to know whether she was still going to school or not.

  Or whether she was still in Jefferson, for that matter. Because now and then I would see Matt Levitt in his racer after the garage closed in the afternoon, when Linda used to be with him, and now and then at night going to and from the picture show. But not anymore now. He would be alone in the racer, or with another boy or man. But as far as I knew, Matt never saw her any more than Uncle Gavin did.

  And you couldn’t tell anything from Uncle Gavin. It used to be that on the way home from school I would see him and Linda inside Christian’s drugstore eating ice cream and when he or they saw me he would beckon me in and we would all have ice cream. But that — the fact that there was no longer any reason to look in Christian’s when I passed — was the only difference in him. Then one day — it was Friday — he was sitting at the table inside waiting and watching to beckon me inside, and even though there was no second dish on the table I thought that Linda had probably just stepped away for a moment, maybe to the perfume counter or the magazine rack, and even when I was inside and he said, “I’m having peach. What do you want?” I still expected Linda to step out from behind whatever for the moment concealed her.

  “Strawberry,” I said. On the table was the last book — it was John Donne — he had ordered for her.

  “It will cost the same dime to mail it to her here in Jefferson that it would cost if she were in Memphis,” he said. “Suppose I stand the ice cream and give you the dime and you take it by her house on the way home.”

  “All right,” I said. When Mr Snopes first came to Jefferson he rented the house. Then he must have bought it because since he became vice president of the bank they had begun to fix it up. It was painted now and Mrs Snopes I reckon had had the wistaria arbor in the side yard fixed up and when I came through the gate Linda called me and I saw the hammock under the arbor. The wistaria was still in bloom and I remember how she looked with her black hair under it because her eyes were kind of the color of wistaria and her dress almost exactly was: lying in the hammock reading and I thought Uncle Gavin didn’t need to send this book because she hasn’t finished the other one yet. Then I saw the rest of her school books on the ground beneath the hammock and that the one she was reading was geometry and I wondered if knowing she would rather study geometry than be out with him would make Matt Levitt feel much better than having her eat ice cream with Uncle Gavin.

  So I gave her the book and went on home. That was Friday. The next day, Saturday, I went to the baseball game and then I came back to the office to walk home with Uncle Gavin. We heard the feet coming up the outside stairs, more than two of them, making a kind of scuffling sound and we could even hear hard breathing and something like whispering, then the door kind of banged open and Matt Levitt came in, quick and fast, holding something clamped under his arm, and shoved the door back shut against whoever was trying to follow him inside, holding the door shut with his braced knee until he fumbled at the knob until he found how to shoot the bolt and lock it. Then he turned. He was good-looking. He didn’t have a humorous or happy look, he had what Ratliff called a merry look, the merry look of a fellow that hadn’t heard yet that they had invented doubt. But he didn’t even look merry now and he took the book — it was the John Donne I had taken to Linda yesterday — and kind of shot it onto the desk so that the ripped and torn pages came scuttering and scattering out across the desk and some of them even on down to the floor.

  “How do you like that?” Matt said, coming on around the desk where Uncle Gavin had stood up. “Dont you want to put up your dukes?” he said. “But that’s right, you aint much of a fighter, are you. But that’s O.K.; I aint going to hurt you much anyway: just mark you up a little to freshen up your memory.” He didn’t, he didn’t seem to hit hard, his fists not travelling more than four or five inches it looked like, so that it didn’t even look like they were drawing blood from Uncle Gavin’s lips and nose but just instead wiping the blood onto them; two or maybe three blows before I could seem to move and grab up Grandfather’s heavy walking stick where it still stayed in the umbrella stand behind the door and raise it to swing at the back of Matt’s head as hard as I could.

  “You, Chick!” Uncle Gavin said. “Stop! Hold it!” Though even without that, I wouldn’t have thought Matt could have moved that fast. Maybe it was the Golden Gloves that did it. Anyway he turned and caught the stick and jerked it away from me almost before I knew it and naturally I thought he was going to hit me or Uncle Gavin or maybe both of us with it so I had already crouched to dive at his legs when he dropped the point of the stick like a bayoneted rifle, the point touching my chest just below the throat as if he were not holding me up but had really picked me up with the stick like you would a rag or a scrap of paper.