I had been promising Grandma for some time that I would invite her "boy" friend, Hellwig, out to Banning. At last we settled on the time--it had to be a Saturday night because of his work. Although he is past eighty, he still works half-days in a printing plant. Hellwig and Grandma arrived on the bus in the early afternoon, and Grant drove to the station to pick them up. Hellwig was laden with several of the familiar brown-wrapped packages which, I knew, contained paper. His pockets were bulging with chocolate bars. Now that I have a family of my own, he brings three times as many chocolate bars when he comes to see us, knowing that if he brought candy enough for just me, David and Donna wouldn't leave me much of it. Hellwig gathered me and Donna, whom I was holding, into his feeble embrace. The odor of mothballs was almost suffocating, but I was so glad to see him again that I didn't mind. "So here is little Donna!" exclaimed Hellwig, his pale blue eyes twinkling. "Well, how do you do, what a nice little girl! And how she has grown!" "Godfrey Mighty, but that's a long bus ride," Grandma exclaimed, shedding her purse and hat and sinking onto the davenport, her black eyes, bright in their setting of smooth, unlined skin, running over the house in a swift search for dust. I went out to wait on a customer then--a short, heavy set man whose glasses made his eyes look huge, misshapen and threatening. "I'm driving on to Thousand Palms tomorrow," he remarked, as he paid me. "Thousand Palms? That's going Twenty-Nine Palms one better, isn't it?" I said brightly. His magnified eyes rested upon me for a moment. "No," he replied, "that's going Twenty-Nine Palms nine hundred and seventy-one better." When I went back into the living room Grandma was darting about with a dustdoth, peering into crevices and crannies, looking for dust. Hellwig was being entertained by David, who was showing him the report card he had just brought home. "Well, how do you do!" Hellwig exclaimed. "An A in reading! Is that because you get so much practice reading the funny papers?" David smiled, displaying the gap where his two center lower teeth had been. I watched Hellwig while he and David discussed David's school work. Although he had been "going steady" with Grandma for over twenty-five years, ever since her husband died, he had never popped the question. An unfortunate experience with a fiancee, when he was twenty (according to what he'd told Grandma, it was something about his advice concerning the use of cosmetics being scornfully rejected) had resulted in his snatching off her engagement ring, throwing it furiously into a river, and vowing never again to propose marriage to any woman. It occurred to me suddenly that maybe a mere technicality stood in the way of his marrying Grandma. Maybe, since according to his vow he couldn't propose to her, he was waiting for her to propose to him. I'd have to suggest that to her before they left.