"That's right, dear. Never tell a man anything he doesn't need to know, and lie with a straight face rather than hurt his feelings or diminish his pride."

"Aunt Nanny Goat, I just plain love you."

We quit yakking and looked for our men. Deety said that they were certain to be in the basement. "Aunt Hilda, I don't go there without invitation. It's Pop's sanctum sanctorum."

"You're warning me not to risk a faux pas?"

"I'm his daughter, you're his wife. Not the same."

"Well... he hasn't told me not to-and today he'll forgive me, if ever. Where do you hide the stairs?"

"That bookcase swings out."

"Be darned! For a so-called cabin this place is loaded with surprises. A bidet in each bath didn't startle me; Jane would have required them. Your walk-in freezer startled me only by being big enough for a restaurant. But a bookcase concealing a priest's hole-as Great-Aunt Nettie used to say, 'I do declare!"

"You should see our septic tank-yours, now."

"I've seen septic tanks. Pesky things-always need pumping at the most inconvenient time."

"This one won't have to be pumped. Over three hundred meters deep. An even thousand feet."

"For the love of- Why?"

"It's an abandoned mine shaft below us that some optimist dug a hundred years back. Here was this big hole, so Pop used it. There is a spring farther up the mountain. Pop cleaned that out, covered it, concealed it, put pipe underground, and we have lavish pure water under pressure. The rest of Snug Harbor Pop designed mostly from prefab catalogs, fireproof and solid and heavily insulated. We have-you have, I mean-this big fireplace and the little ones in the bedrooms, but you won't need them, other than for homeyness. Radiant heat makes it skin-comfortable even in a blizzard."

"Where do you get your power? From the nearest town?"

"Oh, no! Snug Harbor is a hideout, nobody but Pop and me-and now you and Zebadiah-knows it's here. Power packs, Aunt Hilda, and an inverter in a space behind the back wall of the garage. We bring in power packs ourselves, and take them out the same way. Private. Oh, the leasehold record is buried in a computer in Washington or Denver, and the Federal rangers know the leaseholds. But they don't see us if we see or hear them first. Mostly they cruise on past. Once one came by on horseback. Pop fed him beer out under the trees-and from outside this is just a prefab, a living room and two shedroof bedrooms. Nothing to show that important parts are underground."

"Deety, I'm beginning to think that this place-this cabin-cost more than my townhouse."

"Uh., probably."

"I think I'm disappointed. Sugar Pie, I married your papa because I love him and want to take care of him and promised Jane that I would. I've been thinking happily that my wedding present to my bridegroom would be his weight in bullion, so that dear man need never work again."

"Don't be disappointed, Aunt Hilda. Pop has to work; it's his nature. Me, too. Work is necessary to us. Without it, we're lost."

"Well... yes. But working because you want to is the best sort of play."

"Correct!"

"That's what I thought I could give Jacob. I don't understand it. Jane wasn't rich, she was on a scholarship. Jacob had no money-still a teaching fellow, a few months shy of his doctorate. Deety, Jacob's suit that he wore to be married in was threadbare. I know that he pulled up from that; he made full professor awfully fast. I thought it was that and Jane's good management."

"It was both."

"That doesn't account for this. Forgive me, Deety, but Utah State doesn't pay what Harvard pays."

"Pop doesn't lack offers. We like Logan. Both the town and the civilized behavior of Mormons. But- Aunt Hilda, I must tell you some things."

The child looked worried. I said, "Deety, if Jacob wants me to know something he'll tell me."

"Oh, but he won't and I must!"

"No, Deety!"

"Listen, please! When I said, 'I do,' I resigned as Pop's manager. When you said, 'I do,' the load landed on you. It has to be that way, Aunt Hilda. Pop won't do it; he has other things to think about, things that take genius. Mama did it for years, then I learned how, and now it's your job. Because it can't be farmed out. Do you understand accountancy?"

"Well, I understand it, I took a course in it. Have to understand it, or the government will skin you alive. But I don't do it, I have accountants for that- and smart shysters to keep it inside the law."

"Would it bother you to be outside the law? On taxes?"

"What? Heavens, no! But Sharpie wants to stay outside of jail-I detest an institutional diet."

"You'll stay out ofjail. Don't worry, Aunt Hilda-I'll teach you double-entry bookkeeping they don't teach in school. Very double. One set for the revenooers and another set for you and Jake."

"It's that second set that worries me. That one puts you in the pokey. Fresh air alternate Wednesdays."

"Nope. The second set is not on paper; it's in the campus computer at Logan."

"Worse!"

"Aunt Hilda, please! Certainly my computer address code is in the department's vault and an I.R.S. agent could get a court order. It wouldn't do him any good. It would spill out our first set of books while wiping every trace of the second set. Inconvenient but not disastrous. Aunt Hillbilly, I'm not a champion at anything else but I'm the best software artist inthe business. I

at your elbow until you are sure of yourself.

"Now about how Pop got rich- All the time he's been teaching he's also been inventing gadgets-as automatically as a hen lays eggs. A better can opener. A lawn irrigation system that does a better job, costs less, uses less water. Lots of things. But none has his name on it and royalties trickle back in devious ways.

"But we aren't freeloaders. Every year Pop and I study the Federal Budget and decide what is useful and what is sheer waste by fat-arsed chairwarmers and pork-barrel raiders. Even before Mama died we were paying more income tax than the total of Pop's salary, and we've paid more each year while I've been running it. It does take a bundle to run this country. We don't begrudge money spent on roads and public health and national defense and truly useful things. But we've quit paying for parasites wherever we can identify them.

"It's your job now, Aunt Hilda. If you decide that it's dishonest or too risky, I can cause the computer to make it all open and legal so smoothly that hankypanky would never show. It would take me maybe three years, and Pop would pay high capital gains. But you are in charge of Pop now."

"Deety, don't talk dirty."

"Dirty, how? I didn't even say 'spit."

"Suggesting that I would willingly pay what those clowns in Washington want to squeeze out of us. I would not be supporting so many accountants and shysters if I didn't think we were being robbed blind. Deety, how about being manager for all of us?"

"No, ma'am! I'm in charge of Zebadiah. I have my own interests to manage, too. Mama wasn't as poor as you thought. When I was a little girl, she came into a chunk from a trust her grandmother had set up. She and Pop gradually moved it over into my name and again avoided inheritance and estate taxes, all legal as Sunday School. When I was eighteen, I converted it into cash, then caused it to disappear. Besides that, I've been paying me a whopping salary as Pop's manager. I'm not as rich as you are, Aunt Hilda, and certainly not as rich as Pop. But I ain't hurtin'."

"Zebbie may be richer than all of us."

"You said last night that he was loaded but I didn't pay attention because I had already decided to marry him. But after experiencing what sort of car he drives I realize that you weren't kidding. Not that it matters. Yes, it did matter-it took both Zebadiah's courage and Gay Deceiver's unusual talents to save our lives."