option. If they won, good. If they lost, status quo anyway.

Celia was gesturing urgently as the inner door opened.

"Buy!" I said and I slammed down the receiver.

It was hard to adjust to the dim lighting in the principal's office. His room was loaded with antique fiberglass furniture of the twenty-first century. He sat behind, or rather within, a donut-shaped desk, a moon-faced man with short, monk-like haircut, and bulbous nose.

"You are the parents of Edmund Sponsor?" We nodded. He pressed a button. "Very well. We will send for the boy."

He swivelled around to face a wall of slanting glass which overlooked the children's playground. We could see two ranks of boys in a tug-of-war, and some little girls playing red-rover.

"Scott," he said into a tiny microphone on his desk top. A playground instructor looked up.

"Yes, sir?"

"Please send Edmund Sponsor to my office."

"He's not here, sir. I believe he's in the dormitory."

"How does that happen?" demanded the principal. "This is game time."

"He declined to join in the competition, sir."

"I see. Thank you."

I felt a hot flush of embarrassment. My son non-competitive? That seemed impossible. He must be ill. It was an insulting accusation.

The principal flicked on the wall visa-screen. It showed a lean, rather formally-attired man seated on a lounge in the anteroom, next to a uniformed policeman.

"Masefield? I believe it would expedite matters if you would find Edmund Sponsor in the dormitory and bring him here. Would you do that, please?"

Masefield nodded and the screen darkened. The principal turned to us.

"This incident on the playground which you just witnessed may perhaps spare us all an overly long explanation. Mr. Sponsor, I have been in touch with your wife from time to time, 

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