Father often told her poetry as she stepped to and fro; the kitchen seemed to her just chock-full of poetry. Father had said so much there the walls seemed soaked with it. Sometimes in the evening when she went in just before she went to bed to get a drink of water or to see that the bread sponge was all right, it seemed to her, especially if she were a little sleepy, that she could hear a murmur of poetry all around her, the way a shell murmurs when you put it to your ear.... “Now all away to Tir na n’Og are many roads that run,” “Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere.” “Waken, lords and ladies gay! To the greenwood haste away!” “Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea....” It was not water that Helen Knapp drank out of the tin dipper hung over the sink. It was ambrosia. And Father told her stories, too, all kinds, lots of funny ones that set them into gales of laughter! And they talked, talked about everything, about her writing, and what she was reading in school, and the last book she had got out of the Library, and once in a great while Father would tell her something about when he went to the State University and what an exciting time he’d had finding out how much he loved books and poetry. Helen had never heard Father speak of those years till now. He seemed to feel, the way she did, that it was easier to talk about things you cared awfully about when you were working together. Helen often wondered why this was, why she didn’t feel so queer and shy when she was doing something with her hands, buttering a cake-tin, or cutting animal-shaped cookies out of the dough that Father rolled so beautifully thin. She even found that she could talk to Father about “things.” By “things” Helen meant all that she had always before kept to herself, what she had never supposed you could talk about to anybody--the little poems that sprang up in your head; what you felt when the spring days began to dapple the sidewalks with shadows from the baby leaves; what you felt when you woke up at night and heard the freight-trains hooting and groaning to and fro in the yards--Helen loved living near the railroad--what you thought about growing up; what you thought about God; what kind of a husband you would like to have when you were big; what kind of children you hoped you’d have. “I’d kind of _like_ a little baby boy with curly yellow hair,” she said thoughtfully one day, as she bent her head over the butter and sugar she was creaming together.