Another of Bates' slight, facile stories with everyday heroines--this one Marianne who gets a summer job babysitting a brain-damaged eight-year-old in the expensive Chicago apartment building where Marianne's father is a doorman. Despite the child's tantrums and sloppy eating habits, Marianne comes to feel fond and protective toward Catsy Kranz, and there are some conflicts with the Kranz' housekeeper who is becoming old and irritable toward Catsy. But it is Catsy's older brother Toby, home for the summer between an Eastern prep school and MIT, who dominates Marianne's mind, and, after a while, her time. Marianne would make it her body as well, but Toby holds off, having once gotten a girl pregnant and now having promised Marianne's father to behave--so there are lots of glamorous dates at the yacht club, long kisses, and reluctant partings when the kisses become steamy. Then he leaves for college with promises to write. An inconsequential summer skimmer.