tangled lawn and to cut the undergrowth in the
thin woodsy back area where James had played in concealment.

But the air inside was changed. Janet, as Mrs. Bagley, had been as close
to James Holden as any substitute mother could have been. Now she seemed
preoccupied and too busy with her own life to act more than pleasantly
polite. He could have been visiting the home of a friend instead of
returning to the domicile he had created, in which he had provided her
with a home--for herself and a frightened little girl. She asked him how
he had been and what he was doing, but he felt that this was more a
matter of taking up time than real interest. He had the feeling that
somewhere deep inside, her soul was biting its fingernails. She spoke of
Martha with pride and hope, she asked how Judge Carter was making out and
whether Martha would be able to finish her schooling via Holden's
machine.

James believed this was her problem. Martha had been educated far beyond
her years. She could no more enter school now than he could; unwittingly
he'd made Martha a misfit, too. So James tried to explain that part of
the study undertaken in Judge Carter's program had been the question of
what to do about Martha.

The professionals studying the case did not know yet whether Martha would
remain ahead of her age group, or whether to let her loaf it out until
her age group caught up with her, or whether to give Martha everything
she could take as fast as she could take it. This would make a female
counterpart of James Holden to study.

But knowing that there were a number of very brilliant scientists,
educators, and psychologists working on Martha's problem did not cheer up
Mrs. Janet Fisher as much as James thought it should. Yet as he watched
her, he could not say that Tim Fisher's wife was _unhappy_.

Tim, on the other hand, looked fine. James watched them together as
critically curious as he'd been in watching the Judge and Mrs. Carter.
Tim was gentle with his wife, tender, polite, and more than willing to
wait on her. From their talk and chit-chat, James could detect nothing.
There were still elisions, questions answered with a half-phrase,
comments added with a disconnected word and replied in another word
that--in cold print--would appear to have no bearing on the original
subject. This sort of thing told James nothing. Judge Carter and his wife
did the same; if there were any difference to be noted it was only in the
basic subjec