"Daddy probably washed before he came in," said Margery. She took the cover off a tureen, ladled soup into bowls and passed sandwiches, pretending not to see the ink-stained hand Jonathan was hiding in his lap. Jonathan, elated by the promise of success, ate three or four sandwiches, had two bowls of soup and finally sat back while Margery went to get coffee. Richie slid part way off his chair, remembered, and slid back on again. "Kin I go?" he asked. "Please may I be excused," corrected his father. * * * * * Richie repeated, received a nod and ran out of the dinette and through the kitchen, grabbing a handful of cookies on the way. The screen door banged behind him as he raced into the backyard. "Richie!" Margery started after him, eyes ablaze. Then she stopped and came back to the table with the coffee. "That boy! How long does it take before they get to be civilized?" Jonathan laughed. "Oh, sure," she went on, sitting down opposite him. "It's funny to you. But if you were here all day long--" She stirred sugar into her cup. "We should have sent him to camp, even if it would have wrecked the budget!" "Oh? Is it that bad?" Margery shuddered. "Sometimes he's a perfect angel, and then--It's unbelievable, the things that child can think of! Sometimes I'm convinced children are another species altogether! Why, only this morning--" "Well," Jonathan broke in, "next summer he goes to camp." He stood up and stretched. Margery said wistfully, "I suppose you want to get back to work." "Ummmm." Jonathan leaned over and kissed her briefly. "I've got a new line of attack," he said, picking up his coffee. He patted his wife's shoulder. "If things work out well, we might get away on that vacation sooner than we thought." "Really?" she asked, brightening. "Really." He left the table and went back to his den. Putting the next tape on the machine, he settled down to his job. Time passed and finally there were no more tapes to listen to. He stacked his notes and began making lists, checking through the sheets of paper for repetitions of words Easton had used, listing the various connotations which had occurred to Jonathan while he had listened to the tapes. As he worked, he was struck by the similarity of the words he was recording to the occasional bits of double-talk he had heard used by comedians in theaters and on the air, and he allowed his mind to wander a bit, exploring the possibilities. Was Martian actually such a close relative to English? Or had the Martians learned English from Easton, and had Easton then formed a sort of pidgin-English-Martian of his own? Jonathan found it difficult to believe in the coincidence of the two languages being alike, unless-- He laughed. Unless, of course, Earthmen were descended from Martians, or vice versa. Oh, well, not my problem, he thought jauntily. * * * * *