Free With by Donald Harington

him that she was very sorry to have to tell him that they would both have to wait until they were much older before they could exchange peeks as he suggested. “You’re so smart you won’t ever have any fun,” he said.
    Once a couple of years ago while she was sitting on Grandpa Spurlock’s lap and he was telling her one of his stories—he told such great stories about the old-time folks who had lived in these Ozark mountains—she had noticed some kind of bump or lump beneath her bottom and reached down to squeeze it and ask, “Grampa, what is that ?” And he had squirmed and got real red in the face and said, “Aw, Cupcake, that’s jist my mousy. Don’t you be a-foolin with it.” And she hadn’t tried to squeeze it again. But later when her friends were talking about what a part could be called, she contributed “mousy,” although she didn’t say she’d learned it from her step-grandfather.
    She just loved Grandpa Spurlock. He was the only male she knew (including Jimmy and Mr. Palmer, her Sunday school teacher, and Dr. Vanderpool, her pediatrician) toward whom she really felt respect and affection. She knew he wasn’t really her grandfather but just married to her grandmother. Still, she felt closer to him than to her mother, who was so strict and distracted, or even her dear grandmother, who was so religious she had once told Robin she didn’t care what she did so long as she got into Heaven, by and by.
    The reason she was thinking of Grandpa this afternoon was not because of his mousy but because she was playing with her paper dolls, and every time she did that she thought of him, because one of her paper dolls was Grandpa Spurlock. It had been he who had given her a book of punch-out paper-dolls when she was four, and who, upon discovering that she liked to create her own paper dolls, had provided her with reams of paper and pasteboard with which to cut them out and clothe them. He had even given her a very good pair of scissors so that she didn’t have to use her mother’s, although her mother was very upset at the idea of Robin owning something so sharp and pointed. Although Grandpa Spurlock had also given her Paddington, her beloved teddy bear without whom she could not sleep at night, it was the paper dolls that really made her think of him, and even name one after him as a citizen, in fact the mayor, of her little town. Robin had created a whole village of paper dolls: men, women and children, families named White, and Brown, and Green, and Black, and Gray, and she had her hands full managing their wardrobes, not to mention inventing a life story for each one of them, and creating enough struggles and entanglements among them to give drama to her private world. Paddington sat in the chair opposite and watched her solemnly while she snipped and snipped and snipped. Her village, which was called Robinsville, even contained a paper bear named Paddington.
    In fact she was running out of paper, but Grandpa had promised to bring some more the next time he came, and she hoped he might even come today.
    Now it often happened in Robin’s life that whenever she thought about something, or was hoping for something, that that something actually came to pass, it really occurred, it appeared as if by magic, the magic that was in Robin’s head. It made her feel powerful and it made her wonder if she had the ability to perceive things that other people could not.
    Anyway, there came a knock at the door. There were hardly ever any knocks at the door. Once in a great while there might be a couple of women selling a religious magazine and she had to tell them that she was not allowed to open the door. Robin ran to the door and called, “Who is it?”
    And the voice said, “It’s your grandpa. Open up.”
    And she turned the deadbolt and was about to open the door, ready to jump into his arms and be lifted up, when suddenly she realized that he had not knocked with the code,