"I'm jumpy," she said.

"My nerves are all over the place.

Do you wonder ?" "No, tell me the rest." Joan's voice took on a little deeper note like that of a child who has come to the really creepy bit of his story.

"Marty," she went on, "I wish you could have heard the way in which Grandmother let herself go! She held me by the scruff of my neck and hit me right and left with the sort of sarcasm that made me crinkle.

According to her, I was on the downward path.