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Dr. Alexander Q. Tower had lived in Kings Row for eight years. No one was quite sure where he had come from. It was generally understood in the beginning that he came from somewhere “back East.” Such arrivals were few in Kings Row professional ranks. Usually, if a new doctor or lawyer moved in, it was only after looking over the field and consulting with the banks and businessmen. Dr. Tower had settled here without any preliminaries. He bought the old Price place on Walnut Street. This house had been vacant for ten years and was in a run-down state. He bought new furniture but made few repairs on the house. His wife and five-year-old daughter arrived a few weeks later.

There was a semi-detached wing to the house, and on this he hung his shingle: Dr. Alexander Q. Tower, Physician and Surgeon.

A few women called. They found Mrs. Tower a quiet, well-bred lady, but singularly uncommunicative. The Towers made vague references to various places of residence, but nothing of their previous history was clear. Mrs. Tower returned none of the calls and no further advances were made by the town.

So far as anyone knew, Dr. Tower had never had a patient. After a while the office rooms remained shuttered, and Dr. Tower was seen less and less frequently. He sent a Negro boy for his mail, and he was known to order a great many books through Brighton’s Bookstore. Strange books, too, some of them in French and German.

It was said on the authority of Lucius Curley, the banker, that Dr. Tower was “well fixed”—the regulation phrase describing anyone of ample means. It was also known that he drew regular drafts on a bank in Philadelphia. But why he chose to live in Kings Row no one knew. Many people said that he must have run away from something.

He was a tall man, slender and fastidiously dressed. His large brilliant eyes seemed unnaturally alive and observant in contrast to his pallor and masklike absence of expression. He appeared preoccupied or distrait, but he invariably returned greetings with a grave courtesy. One noticed his slender, beautifully kept hands—quick, nervous hands. Somehow he gave the contradictory impression of being dead to the world about him but keenly—even painfully—aware of some other world inside. It was a strange impression, and an uncomfortable one.

Everyone heard that he had fitted up a long room at the back of the house—a room which had been the nursery of the numerous Price children—as a sort of laboratory. Bottles and curious apparatus and hundreds of books, it was said. But there was no guessing what he might be studying or working at. “Making experiments,” people said and let it go at that.

Dr. Tower was the town mystery, and however little ground there was for speculation, there was never any lack of whispered wonder and comment.

For several years now, Mrs. Tower could be seen every day, sitting inside her living-room window. She never seemed to occupy herself in any way with fancywork or knitting. She simply sat there hour after hour, apparently taking no notice of people passing in the street nor, as far as anyone could tell, of anything in the room.

Colonel Skeffington often said that she looked as if she were afraid. “She’s listening for something,” he remarked to his friend, Miles Jackson. “If that woman doesn’t end up in the lunatic asylum over there, I’ll be surprised.... I wonder what in the hell that ‘Q’ in his name stands for.”

Several days after Cassandra had mentioned her party to Parris, some thirty-five children received invitations. The list with a few exceptions indicated a lively awareness of the town’s carefully drawn social lines.

Louise Gordon showed her invitation to her mother. Louise was the only child of Dr. Henry Gordon. Mrs. Gordon was a social power. She was the wife of the leading physician—and doctors knew all there was to know of their patients’ family affairs. Mrs. Gordon had a thin, pious face. She was indefatigable in church work and took her social position seriously.

Her features seemed to congeal when she read the formally worded note. She looked narrowly at Louise. “Do you like Cassandra, dear?” she asked softly.

The question seemed to foreshadow and to frame the answer.

“Well, n-no,” Louise replied.

Mrs. Gordon folded the invitation and replaced it in the envelope. She handed it back to Louise with a gesture that placed it among childish considerations.

“I think, then, I would prefer you didn’t go,” she said.

“Oh, but Mother—all—everybody’s going. She sent out lots and lots of invitations. I do want to go.”

“I don’t think you’d better—”

“Oh, Mother!” Louise’s protest verged on a wail.

Mrs. Gordon smiled. She had a peculiar smile. “Why don’t you have a party of your own?”

“Honestly? Could I? But I want to go to Cassandra’s party, too. Why can’t I? Then I could invite her.”

“You could have your party at the same time,” Mrs. Gordon suggested.

“You mean Saturday afternoon? But everybody’s going to Cassandra’s.”

“Oh, I dare say there will be a lot of children who won’t be going. You can find out. Suppose you use your father’s telephone. You can ask them this afternoon. I’m sure you can have quite a nice party without going to Cassandra Tower’s house.”

All of that week there was much buzzing on the playground about the two parties. Girls whispered together in little groups and boys asked each other self-consciously, “Which party you goin’ to?”

The usual answer was: “I don’t know, yet. Which one you goin’ to?”

Very quickly there was a tension in the normally casual relationship of various children. It was somehow understood that a kind of rivalry lay behind the important question.

Louise Gordon was busy with her lists. She was certain of some fifteen or so of Cassandra’s guests. Her mother had undertaken to extend some of the invitations in her behalf. She had suggested more than once during the course of her chats with parents how desirable it really was to have normal, healthy children meet and enjoy themselves under cheerful and normal conditions. “Conditions we fully understand, you know.”

Louise spoke to Parris the first day after her mother’s decision. “I want you to come to my party, Parris. Saturday. We’re going to have lots of fun.”

“I can’t, Louise. I told Cassandra I’d come to her house.”

“Oh, pshaw. Why can’t you come?”

“I told you,” he explained patiently. “She asked me first.”

“I don’t think that makes any difference if you really want to go somewhere.”

Parris stared uncomprehendingly. It was clear that Louise hadn’t heard what he had said. He began all over again.

“But Louise, I got Cassandra’s invitation first, and I cept—cept—I accepted it. Anyhow she asked me before—”

Louise interrupted him with a toss of her head that sent her two brown plaits flying. “Oh, well, if you don’t want to come, it’s all right, of course.”

“I—listen, Louise—” But Louise was signaling Garvin Adams.

“Oh-h, Garvin. I been wanting to see you. Listen ...”

Cassandra Tower gave no sign. Seemingly she was unaware of the unwonted excitement. By Friday it was apparent that Louise had gained some valuable desertions.

“Garvin Adams is going to Louise’s.” Garvin was a popular boy. His father owned a lot of the store buildings on Federal Street, and other boys respected this.

Opinion and inclination had been swaying for two or three days. Boys had begun to notice Cassandra more and more, and this was the first chance they had had to see her at home. But gradually it seemed indeed that everybody was going to Louise’s. The vacillating ones leaned with the majority.

Friday afternoon Louise Gordon with two or three satellites passed Cassandra after school.

“Hello, Cassandra,” Louise said sweetly.

“Hello,” Cassandra answered indifferently.

Louise and her friends skipped gaily ahead, looking back once or twice and breaking into irrepressible giggles.