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When the child was born Milly Pardee wanted to name her Myrtle but her husband had said, suddenly, “No, call her Maxine.”

“After whom?” In Mrs. Pardee’s code you named a child “after” someone.

He had seen Maxine Elliott in the heyday of her cold, clear, brainless beauty, with her great, slightly protuberant eyes set so far apart, her exquisitely chiselled white nose, and her black black hair. She had thrilled him.

“After my Uncle Max that lives in–uh–Australia.”

“I’ve never heard you talk of any Uncle Max,” said Mrs. Pardee, coldly.

But the name had won. How could they know that Maxine would grow up to be a rather bony young woman who preferred these high-collared white silk blouses; and said “eyether.”

Maxine had been about twelve when Okoochee beckoned Sam Pardee. They were living in Chicago at the time; had been there for almost three years–that is, Mrs. Pardee and Maxine had been there. Sam was in and out on some mysterious business of his own. His affairs were always spoken of as “deals” or “propositions.” And they always, seemingly, required his presence in a city other than that in which they were living–if living can be said to describe the exceedingly impermanent perch to which they clung. They had a four-room flat. Maxine was attending a good school. Mrs. Pardee was using the linen and silver daily. There was a linen closet down the hall, just off the dining room. You could open the door and feast your eyes on orderly piles of neatly laundered towels, sheets, tablecloths, napkins, tea towels. Mrs. Pardee marketed and cooked, contentedly. She was more than a merely good cook; she was an alchemist in food stuffs. Given such raw ingredients as butter, sugar, flour, eggs, she could evolve a structure of pure gold that melted on the tongue. She could take an ocherous old hen, dredge its parts in flour, brown it in fat sizzling with onion at the bottom of an iron kettle, add water, a splash of tomato and a pinch of seasoning, and bear triumphantly to the table a platter heaped with tender fricassee over which a smooth, saddle-brown gravy simmered fragrantly. She ate little herself, as do most expert cooks, and found her reward when Sam or Maxine uttered a choked and appreciative “Mmm!”

In the midst of creature comforts such as these Sam Pardee said, one evening, “Oil.”

Mrs. Pardee passed it, but not without remonstrance. “It’s the same identical French dressing you had last night, Sam. I mixed enough for twice. And you didn’t add any oil last night.”

Sam Pardee came out of his abstraction long enough to emit a roar of laughter and an unsatisfactory explanation. “I was thinking of oil in wells, not in cruets. Millions of barrels of oil, not a spoonful. Crude, not olive.”

She saw her child, her peace, her linen closet threatened. “Sam Pardee, you don’t mean—-“

“Oklahoma. That’s what I meant by oil. It’s oozing with it.”

Real terror leaped into Milly Pardee’s eyes. “Not Oklahoma. Sam, I couldn’t stand—-” Suddenly she stiffened with resolve. Maxine’s report card had boasted three stars that week. Oklahoma! Why, there probably were no schools at all in Oklahoma. “I won’t bring my child up in Oklahoma. Indians, that’s what! Scalped in our beds.”

Above Sam Pardee’s roar sounded Maxine’s excited treble. “Oo, Oklahoma! I’d love it.”

Her mother turned on her, almost fiercely. “You wouldn’t.”

The child had thrown out her arms in a wide gesture. “It sounds so far away and different. I like different places. I like any place that isn’t here.”

Milly Pardee had stared at her. It was the father talking in the child. Any place that isn’t here. Different.

Out of years of bitter experience she tried to convince the child of her error; tried, as she had striven for years to convince Sam Pardee.

“Places are just the same,” she said, bitterly, “and so are people, when you get to ’em.”

“They can’t be,” the child argued, stubbornly. “India and China and Spain and Africa.”