As we came up to the house she gripped my arm sharply. “Ssssh—there’s Dr. Birdsong.”
I glanced up. He wasn’t in sight, but his dog was sitting on the porch, looking at us. He grinned as we came up the steps. Dr. Birdsong was standing in the doorway, with a tall completely emaciated figure in an old black alpaca suit and a soiled panama hat, and another man in spruce freshly laundered gray seersuckers and a new clean panama hat. The first man was hot, his scanty gray hair sticking to his moist forehead; he had white mustaches stained with telltale tobacco juice and wore a badge pinned to his white shirt. The other man looked enormously upset. He came toward us and held out his hand to Irene.
“I’m sorry!” he said. It seemed to me he was genuinely moved.
Irene pressed her lips together and
