Decision by Allen Drury

future and happiness in life that you do carry the day. If, that is, you agree with me that the young, if they really find a goal in life as imperative as this seems to be for Tay, be allowed to pursue it.”
    “Oh, I do agree.”
    “Then you will persuade Mr. Barbour that Tay should be allowed to leave the ranch and go to law school?”
    “I’ll do my best,” Helen said, “but I think first you should talk to him directly yourself.” For a second Erma looked so stricken that her hostess laughed. “He won’t eat you up,” she promised. “Really. I know he intimidates a lot of people, including, obviously, his own son, but he’s really quite amiable. Why don’t you come back tomorrow afternoon and we’ll have tea? You’ll find it much easier than you think.”
    And to her amazement, as she told Tay years later, Erma did. Frank Barbour was formidable and apparently challenging at first, but this soon changed, and presently he was agreeing mildly with both of them that possibly, after all, it was time for those Barbours who wished to, to venture from the ranch.
    “Of course,” he said, looking so like a big disappointed lion that Miss Tillson almost wanted to throw her arms around him and comfort him, “he is the oldest son, and I have been counting on it. In fact, I never thought there would be any question. But if that’s what he really wants to do—”
    “It is,” Helen said. “Erma’s just told you how he feels.”
    “I think,” Frank said, shooting them both a gloomy glance, “that it’s time he tells me so himself. Don’t you?”
    “Yes,” Helen agreed. “I think maybe, now, it is.”
    Their interview, Tay remembered while Cathy listened intently, had been initially one of the hardest things he had ever done and ultimately one of the easiest and most rewarding. For this he always thanked Erma.
    “And you never thanked your mother?” Cathy demanded sharply. “That was a damned thoughtless thing, considering she was really the one who paved the way for you—”
    “Just a minute!” he said with equal sharpness. “I didn’t say I never thanked her. I often did.”
    “But you thanked Erma more, somehow, didn’t you?”
    “Well—maybe,” he admitted uncomfortably. “But I did thank Mother. She knew how I felt. But I just didn’t feel—well, that I should gush about it. She understood.”
    “Mothers like to be gushed over,” she said. “Didn’t you like your mother?”
    “Are you kidding?” he demanded. “Cut this amateur psychology, okay, and let’s get on with it. Anyway, how do you know what mothers like?”
    “Because I am one,” she said tartly. “And don’t you get into any amateur psychology, either, okay?”
    “Ah ha!” he said dryly. “So all this demon journalism, all these piercing questions, all this killer instinct is just getting back at some man, right? He got you pregnant and left you and now you’re stuck with his child? What is it, a boy or a girl?”
    “Talk about killer instinct,” she said, putting down her pen and notebook and giving him an appraising look. She was really quite pretty, he realized, especially when annoyed—not angry, he could sense that, just annoyed. The distinction suddenly seemed quite important for some reason he didn’t really want to think about.
    “If you must know,” she said, “and obviously you must if we’re going to get any further with my interview of you, I met this boy at Columbia when we were both in journalism school. It was Watergate time and everybody was going to save the world and win a Pulitzer, no one more surely than he and I. So we lived together for a while, and then we got married, and then we had babies, Sandra and Rowland. And then I began to be successful and he began to fail and he started drinking and his fatal charm wore off and then we got divorced and then I came to Washington at thirty-three, landed on the magazine two years ago, and here I am.”
    “Hardly drawing a breath,” he said