"Yes, it's great," he agreed.
Creak! creak! said the shoes.
A heavy, regularly punctuated pause. "Don't you love moonlight
nights?" persisted Missy.
"Yes--when my shoes don't squeak." He tried to laugh.
Missy tried to laugh too. Creak! creak! said the shoes.
Another block lay behind them.
"Moonlight always makes me feel--"
She paused. What was it moonlight always made her feel? Hardly
hearing what she was saying, she made herself reiterate banalities
about the moon. Her mind flew upward to the moon--Jim's downward to
his squeaking shoes. She lived at the other end of town from Raymond
Bonner's house, and the long walk was made up of endless
intermittent perorations on the moon, on squeaking shoes. But the
song of the shoes never ceased. Louder and louder it waxed. It
crashed into the innermost fibres of her frame, completely deafened
her mental processes. Never would she forget it: creak-creak-creak-
creak!
And the moon, usually so kind and gentle, grinned down derisively.
At last, after eons, they reached the corner of her own yard. How
unchanged, how natural everything looked here! Over there, across
the stretch of white moonlight, sat the summerhouse, symbol of peace
and every day, cloaked in its fragrant ramblers.
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