“Your precision in cutting cakes is very much like your accurate fingering of the piano,” she observed irrelevantly, surveying his work with her lips pursed. “A pair of calipers would prove every piece exactly, the same width; and even when you play a Meditation? I'm sure the metronome would waggle in perfect unison with your tempo. I wonder--” She glanced up at him speculatively. “--I wonder if you think with such mathematical precision. Do you always find that two and two make four?” “You mean, have I any imagination whatever?” Bud looked away from her eyes--toward the uncurtained, high little window. A face appeared there, as if a tall man had glanced in as he was passing by and halted for a second to look. Bud's eyes met full the eyes of the man outside, who tilted his head backward in a significant movement and passed on. Marian turned her head and caught the signal, looked at Bud quickly, a little flush creeping into her cheeks. “I hope you have a little imagination,” she said, lowering her voice instinctively. “It doesn't require much to see that Jerry is right. The conventions are strictly observed at Little Lost--in the kitchen, at least,” she added, under her breath, with a flash of resentment. “Run along--and the next time Honey asks you to play the piano, will you please play Lotusblume? And when you have thrown open the prison windows with that, will you play Schubert's Ave Maria--the way you play it--to send a breath of cool night air in?” She put out the tips of her fingers and pressed them lightly against Bud's shoulder, turning toward the door. Bud started, stepped into the kitchen, wheeled about and stood regarding her with a stubborn look in his eyes. “I might kick the door down, too,” he said. “I don't like prisons nohow.” “No-just a window, thank you,” she laughed. Bud thought the laugh did not go very deep. “Jerry wants to talk to you. He's the whitest of the lot, if you can call that--” she stopped abruptly, put out a hand to the door, gave him a moment to look into her deep, troubled eyes, and closed the door gently but inexorably in his face. Jerry was standing at the corner of the house smoking negligently. He waited until Bud had come close alongside him, then led the way slowly down the path to the corrals. “I thought I heard the horses fighting,” he remarked. “There was a noise down this way.” “Is that why you called me outside?” asked Bud, who scorned subterfuge. “Yeah. I saw you wasn't dancing or singing or playing the piano--and I knew Honey'd likely be looking you up to do one or the other, in a minute. She sure likes you, Bud. She don't, everybody that comes along.”