“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “You wanted these people here for the Picnic, didn’t you? All right, we have to make the room decent.” He felt that, as usual, he had picked up the argument by the wrong end. Arguments are like cats: if you take them up by the tail they twist and scratch you. “And another thing,” she added. “You simply must mend that broken railing on the sleeping porch. If the children are going to be out there it isn’t safe.” “I can’t fix _both_ these beds,” he growled. “There’s a bolt missing. Tell me which one Ben will sleep in, I’ll fix that. Ruth’s won’t matter, she’s a skinny little thing, doesn’t weigh much more than Janet.” I wouldn’t mind so much fixing Ruth’s bed, he was thinking; there’d be a kind of vague satisfaction in that. I rather like to think of her lying there, she’s rather attractive even if she is such a numbskull. But Ben, that solid meaty citizen ... he probably snores ... I’ll tell Ben to take this one; this is the one most likely to come down. “How do I know which will take which?” she said. “They’ll arrange that to suit themselves, no matter what we say.” He had carefully lashed the spring to the frame with a piece of rope six weeks before. But it had worked loose and now must be done all over again. The deuce of a job: the spring was precariously balanced at one end only; he was holding the loose end with one hand, trying to rewind the cord with the other. The thought of doing all this for Ben was too silly. No, let Ruth have this one and he would try to make a good job of it. Perspiration rolled from him. He supported the spring with his left elbow, so that he could take the end of the cord with his left hand while tightening it with his right. A fuzz of dust was sticking to his moist cheek. This was too insanely comic: grunting under a bed on a hot electrical afternoon. He could see Phyl’s feet standing motionless by the window. How lovely she was, how he wanted her, wanted to slough away all these senseless tensions and stupidities.... She was always right because she merely acted on instinct; he, usually wrong, because he tried to think things out and act reasonably ... if she knew how heroic he really was, would she understand? He _must_ get her to understand before it was too late. For this--this crisis that was hanging over them, was his deliberately desired trial of strength. And now, if they weren’t careful, they would fritter away all their stamina in preliminary scuffle and nonsense; and when the moment came ... soon, appallingly soon ... there would be no vitality left to meet it.