“HEY!  WATCH IT!  THAT’S MY HEAD!”

As Howie Throckmorton sprawled back into the dirt by home plate to avoid the pitch, a thin cloud of dust swirled above him.  Slowly, he got up beating the dirt from him with just one hand.  The other was tightly gripping his bat, the knuckles white.  “You almost hit me with that ball, Emily!” he complained.

Emily Hinton was not at all sympathetic and even less apologetic.  She replied sweetly, “Then don’t crowd the plate.  Remember I’m a shortstop, not a pitcher like you, and I don’t have your pinpoint accuracy.”  She snickered.  “And it would be a real shame if I accidentally hit you because you were crowding the plate.”

Howie wasn’t fooled.  She did it on purpose.  He bluffed, “You don’t scare me.  Only now I have to chase the ball all the way to the backstop.”

A rule of the game was “if you miss it, you chase it”.  The game was called “Protect the Plate”.  Loosely based on baseball, its object was to practice protecting home plate with an imaginary runner on base.  Protecting said plate gave the runner a chance to get to another base.  An equally fictitious coach had put on the “hit and run” sign and the unseen runner was off like a rabbit on every pitch.  A ball put into play helped him advance.  Or if one was hit foul, he could return safely to his starting place.  When he advanced enough to reach home plate again, a run counted.  But…if the batter failed to protect the plate…and missed the ball…the runner was out.  Three outs and the other real participant in this game was up to bat.  The player with the most runs at the end of the game was the winner.  And Emily always kept score.

There were lots of wild swings and lunges as they battled over every pitch.  Despite what Emily said, her pitching was usually accurate.  And if, sometimes, her competitive nature get the better of her, Howie was usually too polite to call it to her attention.  He didn’t want to give her reason to retaliate…because…well…because sometimes, he didn’t move fast enough to get out of the way.

“Maybe you should let it hit your head,” Emily suggested, as Howie retrieved another ball.  “I am sure it would do no damage.”

“Ha, ha!  Very funny!  Ha, ha!” Howie muttered under his breath, as he raised his bat and stepped back to the plate.  “HEY!”  As Howie lay sprawled in the dirt once more, he realized he had not spoken softly enough.

Binnington, Ohio was a small town, full of mostly tract houses built that were built just after World War II.  Before that it had been a sleepy farming crossroad.  It was in western Ohio, near the Indiana border, about half way between the waters of the Ohio River and Lake Erie.  Years ago a stage and freight company built a relay station there, with a large barn out back to stable horses.  Gradually, other enterprises surrounded it.  When houses and a small college were add after the war, it became a city.

The returning soldiers and their families found Binnington a wonderful place to live and raise children.  The houses were affordable and, with the help of the GI bill, they used the college to finish their educations, put on hold by the war.  The tracts sprang up in what used to be farm fields and spread out in all directions, with the crossroads, becoming the center of town.  Some of these fields belonged to Old Farmer Binning, whose grandfather the town was named after.

  The warriors greeted civilian life with enthusiasm.  Where they used to complain about digging trenches and foxholes, now they gladly dug gardens and flowerbeds.  Tired of drab military colors of brown and green, they gloried in color.  Soon, yards all over the town blossomed in flowers and trees of all colors, shapes, and sizes.  And when the trees got large enough, swings were hung from their branches and forts were built in their tops.  The late war was re-fought and won many times in the backyards of Binnington.

And the brilliant colors extended to the houses.  Tract houses all tend to look the same, so the colors helped tell them apart.  It was not unusual for a visitor to Binnington to get directions something like: “Go straight until you come to a red house on a corner.  Then turn left, and go until you come to a blue house on another corner.  Turn right again.  And it is the third yellow house on the left, right next to a green one.”  It was a colorful, delightful little town.

“OUCH!”

“Well!  You won’t have to chase that ball, Howie.”

Two of the houses in Binnington were not tract houses and they were not new.  The Hinton and Throckmorton homes sitting side-by-side at the end of Sycamore Street were built by Old Farmer Binning and his son, for their two families.  They were two-story Victorians, modeled after a picture Old Mother Binning saw in a magazine.  They were both colored white, but they had blue-shingled roofs.  Gabled windows looked out from the upper story bedrooms.  And large porches adjoined both their fronts and backs.  Their rails were blue and their posts were white.  A thick gray texture was painted on their decks of their porches to keep them for getting slippery in snow and rain. Wide trellises on the sides of the houses rose from the ground to attach to the gables above.

 Between the houses was a large garden where the farm wives used to grow vegetables.  Now it was flowery and prettier than any other garden in Binnington.  It had packed dirt walks lined with whitewashed stones.  An old mill press, covered with ivy, stood at its center.  All kinds of flowers and bushes grew in the garden, but the prettiest, by far, were the roses.  Up from the garden, to the top of the trellises, honeysuckle vines climbed to scent second story.

After his parents passed on, young farmer Binning stopped farming.  With the war, he sold it and retired to Florida.  The barns and sheds were pulled down to make way for the new homes.  But the Victorians were left.  And they were sold to the Hintons and the Throckmortons.

 “Howie, I’m glad to see you’re standing away from the plate, now.  I guess you don’t want to see if your head is as hard as I think it is.”

“Just … (puff…puff)…throw it, Em,” wheezed Howie, as he stood, just barely in the batter’s box, gripping the bat with one hand, and rubbing his stomach with the other, but he backed out before she could.  He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and used the bat to knock dirt from his cleats.   Then he looked over at back porch as if he was expecting an interruption at any minute.  When that didn’t happen, he stepped back into the box and glared at Emily, still carefully keeping a respectful distance from the plate.

That was too easy, Emily thought.  She usually had to brush him off many more times before he backed away the plate.  Emily felt badly when she hit him.  But that was baseball!  You had to let the batter know that the pitcher owned the plate.  Howie was not himself today, something must be bothering him.  Whatever it was, it was keeping him from concentrating.  But what could it be?  If something was really bothering him, she would try not to hit him…so often…maybe.  But it was her duty to find out what it was!

“Is something bothering you, Howie?”

“No!  Just throw the ball.”

They were playing in the field behind their houses.  The only way to get to it was through garden between their yards, or by the old iron gate of a country graveyard just on the other side of the sycamore trees.  The field was narrow at the top, but spread out wide before it stopped before a row of sycamore trees.  Too oddly shaped for the builders to use, it was perfect for a baseball.  Once, a prize bull roamed the ground.  The children of Sycamore Street loved to play there, but they called it “Cow Field”, because none of the mothers on Sycamore Street would let them to use words beginning with “Bull”.

Emily’s and Howie’s fathers were named Ira and Harvey.  They first met during the war in the Pacific after a fierce island battle.  But it was pure chance that they happened to buy the houses next to each other.  However, the families soon became good friends.  And Emily and Howie continued that friendship.

“You’re worthless, Howie,” she said in disgust, as Howie ran to retrieve another ball.  “You’re not keeping your mind on the game.  You couldn’t play your way out of a wet paper bag, today.  Who knows what you will be like in the game tomorrow?”

“And you’re bossy, Emily.  Nobody likes that.  You will probably end up an old maid because you’re so bossy.”

“I could get a date with any boy at school and you know it!” Emily retorted.  She smiled and batted her eyelashes at an imaginary admirer, then she spoiled it by sticking out her tongue at Howie.  “And you would be jealous.”  She hoped so anyway.

Emily would be delighted to know that Howie felt a knot in his stomach as she flirted with the fictitious boy.  What was she doing?  She was supposed to be his best friend!  He did not recognize it as jealousy, however.  He thought he was still sore from Emily hitting him there.

“Anyway, don’t change the subject.  You are not concentrating.  And Coach Buggese says, ‘You play how you practice.’”  Buggese was their high school coach.  “Besides I’m bored standing around doing nothing, while you chase the ball on every other pitch.”

“That’s because you can’t throw straight,” Howie was stung into retorting.

“WHAT?  WELL!  Step a little closer to the plate and let’s see how straight I can throw.”

“NO!” was Howie’s instant response.  “That’s okay.”  He was not about to give her the opportunity to improve her aim.  “I’ve got to stop saying these things out loud,” he whispered to himself.  “Okay, Emily,” he called out.  “I’ll try harder.  But let’s play something else.”  Preferably something that didn’t allow her to throw so close to his head.

 “I get my last at bat, first.”  Howie was one run ahead.

            Their fathers built a backstop on Cow Field from wood and wire salvaged from a chicken coop, and in the center of the infield they piled dirt for a pitcher’s mound.  A pitching rubber was cut out from the side of a whitewall tire and spiked to the top.  It tended to bow slightly as it tried to regain to its tire shape.  Bare earth formed the base paths, and piled rocks in the outfield marked the foul lines.  The field was patched with clumps of matted grass and weeds, constantly trampled by cleats and tennis shoes.  It was marvelous field.  Harvey Throckmorton called it “a diamond in the rough”, and Ira Hinton dutifully laughed every time he said it.

Howie’s father loved to tell corny jokes, the more awful the better.  He sold insurance for a living, and he claimed the jokes helped him in his work.  “They make for smooth selling," he insisted.  It was as important to him to have a joke to tell, as it was to have something to sell.  And he told them whenever he could.  Despite this, he was considered respectable businessman in the town.

            Emily’s father was a court judge.  Before the war, he was a lawyer.  Even though he was older than most of the other soldiers when the war came, he felt the need to serve.  He enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the Pacific, were he worked for Army Intelligence.  His job was to debrief soldiers as they returned from battle, to gather information about the enemy.  That is where he met Harvey, after a fierce battle on a Pacific island.  When he came home, he decided against returning to private practice; instead he took a seat on the bench.

Ira did not tell jokes at work.  In court, people are rarely in a funny mood.  He made up for it at home.  Emily was sure he teased too.  But in court he was a serious, competent judge.

“Come on and throw it already,” Emily called Howie’s attention back to the game.  “What ever you’re doing, you are wasting my time.  And I believe I have the winning run in scoring position.”

“Hold your horses, Emily.  I’ll throw when I’m good and ready.  I was trying to think.”

“Humph!  We don’t have that much time, Howie.”

Howard Thomas Throckmorton was a tall, gangly boy with red hair.  He was fifteen, going on sixteen.  He had a decent pitching arm – not quite major league material - but good enough for high school in small town Ohio.  And Howie was an excellent student.  He was almost always the top in his class.  His favorite subjects were science and math.  To Emily’s amazement, Howie even understood physics.  Why anybody would want to, she didn’t understand.  Howie claimed he even applied physics to his pitching; by the way he held the ball and twisted his arm when he threw.   “It adds velocity and movement,” he insisted.  Maybe it worked.  When he windmilled into a pitch, no one was ever quite sure where the ball was going end up, not even the catcher.  But it went over the plate often enough for Howie have modest success.  And even if he did not make it to the majors, he was having fun and developing a life-long love for the game.

            Emily Hinton, at fourteen, almost fifteen, could catch Howie better than anyone else.  Of course she knew him better than anyone else.  They grew up playing together.  Emily figured she had spent more time with him than his own mother had.  This was appropriate because at the age of six Emily decided she was going to marry Howie, when he grew up.

Having provided his future, Emily felt, deeply, the need to train him properly.  There was no sense having to redo it later on.  So she helped his mother raise him.  It was Emily who taught him to tie his shoes, how to behave in company, and not to scratch in public - things girls naturally know, but boys take a longer time to learn.  It was a good thing that Howie was a year older, or he would have been hopelessly.  His mother learned depend on Emily where ever he was concerned.  Howie did not realize his future good fortune, yet, but it was suspected by almost everyone else in Binnington.

Small high schools in Ohio allowed girls to compete on the boy’s teams.  It was the only way some schools could field teams.  Emily was a shortstop, and a good one.  Being a girl, she would never make a living at it, no matter how good she was.  Although this bothered her, somewhat, she was having as good a time as Howie.

Emily beat out all the boys for starting shortstop.  Her reputation was “good hands, no bat”.  She lacked the size and power to be a good hitter.  But she made up for it by having a small strike zone and walking a lot.  Coach Buggese shrugged off complaints about her hitting insisting, “Good defense beats good offense anytime.”  Then he would spit.  Emily knew it as a compliment.

Despite his success with school and baseball, Howie was a sore disappointment to his family - because he was not a natural salesman like the rest of his family.  Besides his father’s insurance business, Howie’s mother, Louise, sold cosmetics door-to-door.  And his older sister, Meg, sold dresses in a shop down at the crossroads.

Even Meg’s fiance, Mike Evans, was in sales.  He worked for Harvey and Harvey planned on making him a partner after they were married.  The sign on the door would read, “Throckmorton and Son (in-law), Insurance”.

His parents realized Howie was never going to be a salesman the first time they heard him try to tell a joke, one Emily had taught him.  Sadly his mother accepted that there were limits to what Emily could accomplish with him.  This is what she told Emily after she tracked her down to find out what the punch line should have been.

So it was accepted that Howie should become a doctor.  After all, he was good at science, and medicine could be honest work.  “Besides,” Harvey added, looking for a silver lining. “With Howie keeping people alive, insurance payouts were bound to stay low.”

“Let’s find a game you can keep your mind on,” Emily suggested, after her winning run scored.

Emily Hinton was no disappointment to her family.  She was a good student, although not as good as Howie’s, especial in science or math.  She excelled in English and music.  Math was her worst subject, by far.  She was the only child of Ira and Easter Hinton.  They were older than most of the parents of almost fifteen year-old girls.  Easter was beginning to show gray in her hair, and Ira had to wear glasses for reading.  They had almost given up hope of having a child when Emily was born a few years after the war.  Immediately she became the center of their lives, and everyone that knew her loved her almost as much.  She was one of the most popular girls in town.  The local school was full of boys waiting for her to give up on Howie.  Howie was not jealous of Emily’s popularity, but he did not realize he was supposed to be.

Her mother claimed to be only a housewife, still she found time to volunteer at school and church, as well as be there when ever Emily needed her.  Musical herself, she taught piano from the home.  Howie was amazed how many boys took lessons.  He couldn’t figure out why.  He did not believe they were very talented, from the awful sounds escaping through of the Hintons’ parlor windows that even he could tell were awful.  But Easter’s students soon found themselves liking her as much as they liked Emily.  And they would stay and visit over cookies after the lesson was over.  Ira grumped that she was as big a flirt as her daughter.

Emily was pretty and petite, with strawberry-blonde hair that she liked to wear in a ponytail.  She had a neat figure and a creamy complexion.  Louise Throckmorton said so, and she was an expert!  Emily had a delightful sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose.  She inherited her mother’s hands, which were good, not only for ground balls, but also playing the piano.  When she was not required to dress for school or church, she preferred attire was jeans.  She rolled them up above her ankles to show off white bobby socks.  She also liked baggy white shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the tails hanging out.  She sometimes borrowed these from her father.  He grumped about that too.

Emily crouched behind home plate waiting for Howie’s pitch.  He threw it hard enough to sting, but she refused let him know it.  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction!  Instead Emily announced, “If you’re warmed up, you can try throwing hard now.”

 “In this game,” she explained, as she tossed the ball back to him, “we will work on your fielding.  You pitch the ball and I’ll throw it back like it was hit.  Then you field it and throw it back to me like I am covering a base.  If you throw it to me in time, without making an error, the runner will be out.  BUT!  If you miss it, or if you are too slow, the runner goes to the next base.  Do you think you can keep your mind on this game and do that?”

“Here’s the first pitch,” Howie replied, ignoring her sarcasm.  “It’s a slider.”

Emily caught the ball and tossed it into the air, arching it towards left field.  “The ball is popped up,” she told him.  Then for fun acting like a sports announcer, she added,   “And the crowd roars.”

Howie tried to get into the spirit of things.  He said, “The shortstop backs out to meet the ball.  With the confidence of a consummate professional, he sets and raises his glove.

Just as he did, however, Howie caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, a flash of white by his back porch.  A chill ran through him and for a split second he lost sight of the ball.  By the time he found it, it on the ground behind him, rolling to the outfield, leaving Howie looking like anything but a consummate professional.

On the porch strolled Snowball, Emily’s white cat.  She jumped onto the railing where she sat licking her paw, and watching as Howie chased the ball.  She yawned in disdain.

Emily slapped her glove and hooted!

“No fair!  You cheated!” grumbled Howie, as he turned to chase the ball.  “You threw it past me on purpose.  If we are going to play this game, you have to throw it where I can catch it.”

Emily quit laughing.  “Howard Thomas Throckmorton,” she said.   “You are obviously distracted about something.”  She looked at the porch and Snowball.   Then she continued, “But you better be careful of what you are saying.  If you accuse me of cheating, the next ball may end up somewhere near your ear.  And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?”

She asked this calmly, but Howie knew she meant it.  Now he backed up verbally.  “NO!  You’re right, Em,” he agreed, raising both arms in surrender.  “Don’t get upset!  I didn’t mean it.  I got distracted and was not paying attention.”  By luck, he stumbled onto the right thing to say.  It was an act of self-preservation.

And Emily jumped on it.  “Well, then tell me what is bothering you.  Why do you keep looking at your house?”  She paused to consider.  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Howie gave a start.  He forgot how intuitive she was.  Something was bothering him, but should he tell her about it?  Emily loved to fix things –  not always with results he liked.  But she couldn’t fix this one.  No one could.  And she would laugh.  He sighed.  He would keep this problem to himself.

Emily snorted!  She knew him so well.  He wasn’t going to tell her.  She could help him, but he wasn’t going to let her.  Someday he would realize she knew what was best for him.  Then they would get along just fine!

She sighed and wondered what there was that attracted her to Howie.  Other boys were nearly as smart as he was.  And  many were better looking.  Still for some reason he appealed to her, like a puppy dog.  Bit training him was so hard!  Boys should come with instruction manuals.  Out loud, she said, “If you concentrate and catch the ball next time, neither of us will get upset!”

“Yes, Emily!” Howie agreed.  “I’ll concentrate.”  He returned to the mound.  “Here comes another one.”

He placed his foot on the rubber and returned to narrating.  “The pitcher throws from the stretch because he has to hold the runner on at first base.”

“And that runner is on due to a fielding error.”  Emily added, in the interest of accuracy.

Howie glared at her.  “It’s a curveball,” he said, and threw it.

Again the ball slapped into Emily’s glove.  Again she retrieved it.  This time she threw a grounder to the right side of the infield, towards the gap between first and second base.  It was a sacrifice!  A sacrifice is a ball hit behind the runner, so that the easiest play is on the batter at first base.  He would be out, but his sacrifice would move runner on to the next base.

Howie was expecting this.  It was sound baseball strategy and Emily was a good strategist.  But he would fool her and turn the sacrifice into a double play.  He could throw out both runners if he played the ball fast enough.  Anticipating a hit like this, a second baseman would have shifted to his left to plug up the hole making a double play more likely, and let the shortstop cover second.  Howie could make up for being out of position by scooping up the ball with his glove, and shoveling it straight to Emily, acting as the shortstop covering second base, and that runner would be out.  Then he would continue on to first base.  In fairness, Emily would have to throw the ball back it to him and it would be a double play.  That would show her!

As Howie started towards the ball, he let Emily know what he was doing.  “The second baseman is trying to turn a double play.  It is a brilliant move,” he said

Well…it would have been brilliant.  But when Howie moved his left foot, his right foot did not go with it.  It got caught on the bend in the pitching rubber.

Howie executed a gymnastics maneuver sometimes called ”the splits”.  But Howie wasn’t gymnast, and he had tried this move before in his life.  In fact, it came as a complete surprise to him that he was capable of doing the splits, although he was aware of what he was doing while it happened.  Well aware!

Even Emily winced as she saw the look that crossed Howie’s face.

Howie hung there briefly.  “Oh!” he gasped and fell forward.

Emily knew she shouldn’t laugh.  It wasn’t funny!  Well…maybe it was a little funny.  “Sorry you missed it, Howie,” she sympathized.  “The runner on first is now all the way over at third base.  What happened?” she giggled.  “Were you distracted again?”

“Don’t be funny, Em,” whispered Howie, as he struggled to his knees.  “You did that on purpose.  You threw it too far to my left.”

All sympathy vanished.  Indignantly she insisted, “I did not!  I could have caught that!  You tried to do too much.  I can do the splits better, too,” she added, in the interest of accuracy.  She was tempted to kick dirt on him for good measure, but decided that was adding insult to injury.

 “All right.” said Howie between moans.  He was careful not to hold the particular area of pain.  Emily had taught him that wasn’t polite.  “Let’s not argue.  I’ll throw another one.”  Struggling he got up and wobbled his way back to the mound, where he started his next pitch.

He was speaking haltingly.  “The pitcher throws from the stretch…again…as there are runners at both corners.”

“Due to fielding errors,” said Emily.

Howie stopped and glared.  That was rubbing it in.  He would show her!  Summoning all the inner strength he had left, he reared back while saying, “He throws a fastball right down the pipe.”   Then he threw as hard as he could.

The stinging was worst in all her years of catching Howie, but Emily managed to hang onto the ball.  She had pushed him, she knew it.  Howie was usually careful when he pitched to her, especially when she was not wearing catcher’s protective gear.  WELL!  She would have to remind him to be considerate.

She gripped the ball tightly and said, “The batter hits a line drive… right back at the pitcher.”  Then she threw it as hard as she could.

Howie should have known better.  At fifteen, going on sixteen, he really should have known better, but it was too late, by the time he realized what Emily was doing.  And he had not recovered enough to get out of the way.

“Oof,” he said, as the ball slammed into his stomach.  Once more he fell.  Gasping for air, he was at least please that it was okay to hold this area of pain.  Again he resolved to try not doing things to upset Emily.  He really should learn.

Emily was immediately sorry.  She ran over and knelt beside him.  Gently she pulled his head onto her lap and started to stroke his hair, murmuring soft endearments into his ear.

Somehow they made him feel better.

“Oh Howie, I’m so sorry.  Say something.”

“Oof,” he repeated.

They stayed like that for some while, with Emily stroking him as he struggled for breath.

It’s amazing how nice Emily feels, Howie thought, as the pain began to fade.  He decided he didn’t need to get up right away; they were through practicing, he hoped.  Surely all the runners had scored.

“By the way,” Emily giggled, her breath deliciously tickling his ear, “all the runners scored.”

In frustration Howie groaned, “Oh Em.  I’m no good…not at baseball…or anything!”

“Howard Thomas Throckmorton, don’t you dare say that!”  Emily shoved his head off of her lap and it bounce as she stood up.

“Oww!” Howie groaned.  Now he could hold his head.

“You are a good pitcher,” she said.  “You may be a bit clumsy,” she added, in the interest of accuracy.  “But you throw hard.  Look at this.”  She waved her hand, still red from his pitch, in front of him.  She continued, “Something is bothering you, Howard Thomas Throckmorton, and I want to know what it is – right now!”  She stamped her foot.  “You are going to tell me or I will hurt you badly!  Don’t make me hurt you, Howie!  Now what is bothering you?”

Still holding his head, Howie looked up and sheepishly grinned; “I always know when you’re mad at me, Em.  You call me by my full name, just like my mother does.”

“Howard Thomas Throckmorton, you are trying my patience!”  With her fists clenched at her hips, she nudged him with her foot.  “I am trying to help.  Now tell me what is wrong.”

“Okay, Em.  I admit I am bothered by something.”  He propped himself up on his elbows.  “You know my sister Meg is getting married.”

“Yes,” Emily sighed.  “Isn’t it romantic?”  She clasped her hands in front of her.

“Oh, don’t get all mushy and female on me…Oof,” he added.

At that comment, Emily knelt down and punched him in his already tender stomach.  And when she stood back up, she did kick him for good measure.

“Howard Thomas Throckmorton, I am a female, and just like every other female.  We are the softer, gentler sex and if you can’t appreciate that, I will hurt you badly!”  She loomed over him, her fists again at her hips.

“I know you’re a girl, Em” Howie said, “but you’re such a good ball player sometimes I forget …oww! “  When was he going to learn?  Realizing that standing up was imperative to his survival; Howie rolled over and got to his feet, another act of self-preservation.

Emily immediately got in his face.  “Howard Thomas Throckmorton, if you ever say anything mean about me being a girl again, I will knock the daylights out of you.  I may be a ball player, but I am still a sweet, kind, gentle female.  And don’t you forget it.”  She poked her finger in his chest.

“I’m sorry, Em.  It’s just…ouch!”

Emily added one more kick.

“Howie,” his mother’s voice came from across the field.  “It’s time to come home for your dance lesson.”

Emily stopped and stared, her anger forgotten.  “Your dance lesson?  Is that what’s bothering you?  It should!  Howie, you can’t dance!”  Emily knew this from hard experience.  She tried teaching him herself last year.  It was one of her few failures.  She ended up on the floor of the school gymnasium holding her foot, suffering nearly the pain as she was now inflicting on Howie.  Further attempts had not been any better.  Finally she gave up!  Some things were not meant to be.  Howie had some fine qualities, but dancing was not one of them.

This was another vast void between Howie and his family.  The other Throckmortons were great dancers.  They had trophies proudly displayed in their parlor.

 “I’ve got to go,” Howie said.  But he added sighing, “I wish Meg was not getting married!”

“Oh, you don’t mean that!” Emily protested.  “Don’t you want your sister to be happy?”

“Sure, Em.  Of course I do.  It’s only…well…you see…I have to dance with my Aunt Mae at Meg’s wedding.”

“I knew there would be dancing.  Meg told Mom and me today hen we were at the dress shop.  But she did not say that you would be dancing.  Meg is so brave!” Emily added with feeling.

  “Aunt Mae loves to dance, like all the rest of the Throckmortons.  And Meg insists that I be her partner.  She will be upset if Aunt Mae doesn’t dance.”

“But Howie,” Emily insisted, “You don’t want to hurt your aunt, do you?” she asked anxiously, as she subconsciously rubbed her foot.

Howie responded.  “Of course, I don’t!  But Mom and Meg are determined to teach me.”  And with that, he headed home.

“Oh dear!  This problem is worse than I thought,” Emily said, as she watched him go.  “How great must be their patience - or their ignorance.”