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Show -6- and without understanding why, she folded up the rubber sheet from the neighbor's mother and tucked it under a pile of little-used tablecloths in the bottom drawer of the sideboard. She hid the hot water bottle, the bedpan, even the thermometer in other cabinets of the dining room, and did not ask herself why: she had some dim feeling of future need, but beyond that no clear idea. She told herself that the thermometer belonged upstairs in the medicine chest, and the bedpan nowhere at all; but she left them in the dining room nevertheless, merely puzzled by her own doing. Then she went back into the warmth of the kitchen, and though no more of it. JU JU .»- * * She bore him the first of three daughters. From the first the house had been full of laughter, but now there was an earnestness too behind that joy. She was pleased: at last'they were one, she bound willingly to him, as he to her, so that together they could fashion the rest of their lives. But she hunted in her mind for a word he had said, and which she no longer could remember. •A, -<- -t- J^ J* In time, they reached an anniversary. They returned to the inn, to renew and celebrate their love. They walked through the countryside, he laughing and strong in the sun on the road, she stopping to watch the weed-shadowed pools of the stream, and at the end of the day they came back to the room with the carved oval mirror. They stood unclothed before it, and for a moment again they saw themselves as still-perfect complements: he large, |