Sunshine, the old clown, rims the room. Two pink chairs flank the gauze?filled window buttered with light that smears a writing desk furry with envelope?ends. Above the desk is a picture of a lady in pink stepping toward you. A woman's voice is tapping the door. "Mr. Angstrom. Mr. Angstrom."

"Yeah. Hi," he calls, hoarse.

"It's twelve?twenty. Jack told me to tell you the visiting hours at the hospital are one to three." He recognizes Eccles' wife's crisp little twitty tone, like she was adding, And what the hell are you doing in my house anyway?

"Yeah. O.K. I'll be right out." He puts on the cocoa?colored trousers he wore last night and, displeased by the sense of these things being dirty, he carries his shoes and socks and shirt into the bathroom with him, postponing putting them against his skin, giving them another minute to air. Still foggy despite splashing water all around, he carries them out of the bathroom and goes downstairs in bare feet and a T?shirt.

Eccles' little wife is in her big kitchen, wearing khaki shorts this time and sandals and painted toenails. "How did you sleep?" she asks from behind the refrigerator door.

"Like death. Not a dream or anything."

"It's the effect of a clear conscience," she says, and puts a glass of orange juice on the table with a smart click. He imagines that seeing how he's dressed, with just the T?shirt over his chest, makes her look away quickly.

"Hey don't go to any bother. I'll get something in Brewer."

"I won't give you eggs or anything. Do you like Cheerios?"

"Love 'em."

"All right."

The orange juice burns away some of the fuzz in his mouth. He watches the backs of her legs; the white tendons behind her knees jump as she assembles things at the counter. "How's Freud?" he asks her. He knows this could be bad, because if he brings back that afternoon he'll bring back how he nicked her fanny; but he has this ridiculous feeling with Mrs. Eccles, that he's in charge and can't make mistakes.

She turns with her tongue against her side teeth, making her mouth lopsided and thoughtful, and looks at him levelly. He smiles; her expression is that of a high?school tootsie who wants to seem to know more than she's telling. "He's the same. Do you want milk or cream on the Cheerios?"

"Milk. Cream is too sticky. Where is everybody?"

"Jack's at the church, probably playing ping?pong with one of his delinquent boys. Joyce and Bonnie are asleep, Heaven knows why. They kept wanting to look at the naughty man in the guest room all morning. It took real love to keep them out."

"Who told them I was a naughty man?"

"Jack did. He said to them at breakfast, `I brought home a naughty man last night who's going to stop being naughty.' The children have names for all of Jack's problems ? you're the Naughty Man; Mr. Carson, an alcoholic, is the Silly Man; Mrs. MacMillan is the Woman Who Calls Up in the Night. Then there's the Droopsy Lady, Mr. Hearing?Aid, Mrs. Side?Door, and Happy Beans. Happy Beans is just about the least happy man you ever wanted to see, but once he brought the children some of those celluloid capsules with a weight in them, so they jiggle around. Ever since that he's Happy Beans."

Rabbit laughs, and Lucy, having delivered the Cheerios ? too much milk; he is used to living with Ruth, who let him pour his own milk; he likes just enough to take away the dryness, so that the milk and cereal come out even ? chats on confidingly. "The worst thing that happened, in connection with some committee or other Jack was talking with one of the vestrymen over the phone and had the idea that it would buck this poor soul up to be given a church job so he said, `Why not make Happy Beans the chairman of something or other?' Well, the man on the other end of the line said `Happy Who?' and Jack realized what he'd said but instead of just sluffing it off like anybody else would have, Jack told the whole story about the children calling him Happy Beans and of course this stuffy old vestryman didn't think it was at all that funny. He was a friend, you see, of Happy Beans; they weren't exactly business associates but often had lunch together over in Brewer. That's the thing about Jack; he always tells people too much. Now this vestryman is probably telling everybody how the rector pokes fun of this poor miserable Happy Beans."

He laughs again. His coffee comes, in a thin shallow cup monogrammed in gold, and Lucy sits down opposite him at the table with a cup of her own. "He said I'm going to stop being naughty," Rabbit says.

"Yes. He's overjoyed. He went out of here virtually singing. It's the first constructive thing he thinks he's done since he came to Mt. Judge."

Rabbit yawns. "Well I don't know what he did."

"............