To herself she thought, as her face was close to the child's, "I wonder if I look to my little girl as Cousin Hetty used to look to me?" and startled and shocked that the idea kept recurring to her, a.s.suming an importance she was not willing to give it, she cried out to herself, "Oh, stop being so paltry about that!"

Aloud she said, "Don't forget to put your rubbers on. Have you a clean handkerchief? Oh, _Elly_, look at your nails! Here, hand me the nail-file over there, Paul. I'll clean them more quickly than you, dear."

As she cleaned the nails, one eye on the grimly relentless clock, the ideas flicked through her mind like quick, darting flames. "What mediaeval nonsense we do stuff into the school-children's head. What an infamous advantage we take of the darlings' trust in us and their docility to our purposes! My dear little daughter with her bright face of desire-to-do-her-best! What wretched chaff she is getting for that quick, imaginative brain of hers! It's not so bad for Paul, but ... oh, even for him what nonsense! Rules of grammar, names of figures of speech ... stuff left over from scholastic hair-splitting! And the tributaries of rivers ... !" She glanced up for an instant and was struck into remorse by the tranquil expression of peace in the little girl's clear eyes, bent affectionately on her mother. "Oh, my poor, darling little daughter," she thought, "how _can_ you trust anything in this weak and wicked world as you trust your broken reed of a mother? I don't know, dear child, any more than you do, where we are going, nor how we are going to get there. We are just stumbling along, your father and I, as best we can, dragging you and your brothers along with us. And all we can do for you, or for each other, is to love you and ..."

Elly withdrew her hand. "There, Mother, I know they're clean enough now.

I'm afraid I'll be late if I don't go. And you know she scolds like everything if anybody's late." She repeated in a rapid murmur, "The tributaries of the Delaware on the left bank are ..."

Her mother's mind went back with a jerk to the question of river-tributaries. "And what's the use of cramming her memory with facts she could find in three minutes in any Atlas if by any strange chance she should ever ever need to know about the tributaries of the Delaware.

As well set her to learning the first page of the Telephone Directory!

Why don't I do the honest thing by her and say to her that all that is poppy-c.o.c.k?"

An inner dialogue flashed out, lunge, parry, riposte, like rapier blades at play. "Because if I told her it is nonsense, that would undermine her faith in her teacher and her respect for her."

"But why _should_ she respect her teacher if her teacher does not deserve that sort of respect? Ought even a little child to respect anything or anybody merely because of a position of authority and not because of intrinsic worth? No, of course not."

"Oh, you know that's only wild talk. Of course you couldn't send the child to school, and keep her under her teacher, unless you preserve the form of upholding the teacher's authority."

"Yes, but in Heaven's name, why _do_ we send her to school? She could learn twenty times more, anywhere else."

"Because sending her to school keeps her in touch with other children, with her fellow-beings, keeps her from being 'queer' or different. She might suffer from it as she grew up, might desire more than anything in the world to be like others."

Elly had been staring at her mother's face for a moment, and now said, "Mother, what _makes_ you look so awfully serious?"

Marise said ruefully, "It's pretty hard to explain to a little girl. I was wondering whether I was as good a mother to you as I ought to be."

Elly was astonished to the limit of astonishment at this idea. "Why, Mother, how _could_ you be any better than you are?" She threw herself on her mother's neck, crying, "Mother, I wish you never looked serious.

I wish you were always laughing and cutting up, the way you used to.

Seems to me since the war is over, you're more soberer than you were before, even, when you were so worried about Father in France. I'd rather you'd scold me than look serious."

Paul came around the table, and shouldered his way against Elly up to a place where he touched his mother. "Is that masculine jealousy, or real affection?" she asked herself, and then, "Oh, what a _beast_! To be a.n.a.lyzing my own children!" And then, "But how am I ever going to know what they're like if I don't a.n.a.lyze them?"

The dog, seeing the children standing up, half ready to go out, began barking and frisking, and wriggling his way to where they stood all intertwined, stood up with his fore-paws against Paul. The kitten had been startled by his approach and ran rapidly up Marise as though she had been a tree, pausing on her shoulder to paw at a loosened hair-pin.

Marise let herself go on this wave of eager young life, and thrust down into the dark all the razor-edged questions. "Oh, children! children!

take the kitten off my back!" she said, laughing and squirming. "She's tickling me with her whiskers. Oh, _ow_!" She was reduced to helpless mirth, stooping her head, reaching up futilely for the kitten, who had retreated to the nape of her neck and was p.r.i.c.king sharp little pin-pointed claws through to the skin. The children danced about chiming out peals of laughter. The dog barked excitedly, standing on his hind-legs, and pawing first at one and then at another. Then Paul looked at the clock, and they all looked at the clock. The children, flushed with fun, crammed on their caps, thrust their arms into coats, bestowed indiscriminate kisses on their mother and the kitten, and vanished for the morning, followed by the dog, pleading with little whines to be taken along too. The kitten got down and began soberly to wash her face.

There was an instant of appalling silence in the house, the silence that is like no other, the silence that comes when the children have just gone. Through it, heavy-footed and ruthless, Marise felt something advancing on her, something which she dreaded and would not look at.

From above came a sweet, high, little call, "Mo-o-o-ther!" Oh, a respite--Mark was awake!

His mother sprang upstairs to s.n.a.t.c.h at him as he lay, rosy and smiling and sleepy. She bent over him intoxicated by his beauty, by the flower-perfection of his skin, by the softness of his sleep-washed eyes.

She heard almost as distinctly as though the voice were in her ear, "Oh, you mothers use your children as other people use drugs. The child-habit, the drug-habit, the baby-habit, the morphine habit ... two different ways of getting away from reality." That was what Marsh had said one day. What terribly tarnishing things he did say. How they did make you question everything. She wondered what Neale would say to them.

She hoped to have a letter from Neale today. She hoped so, suddenly, again, with such intensity, such longing, such pa.s.sion that she said to herself, "What nonsense that was, that came into my head, out on the road in the dark, the other night, that Neale and I had let the flood-tide of emotion ebb out of our hearts! What could have put such a notion into my head?" What crazy, fanciful creatures women are! Always reaching out for the moon. Yes, that must have been the matter with her lately, that Neale was away. She missed him so, his strength and courage and affection.

"I'm awfully hungry," remarked Mark in her ear. "I feel the hole right _here_." He laid a small shapely hand on the center of his pajama-clad body, but he kept the other hand and arm around his mother's neck, and held her close where he had pulled her to him in his little bed. As he spoke he rubbed his peach-like cheek softly against hers.

A warm odor of sleep and youth and clean, soaped skin came up from him.

His mother buried her face in it as in a flower.

"Ooh!" he cried, laughing richly, "you're tickling me."

"I _mean_ to tickle you!" she told him savagely, worrying him as a mother-cat does her kitten. He laughed delightedly, and wriggled to escape her, kicking his legs, pushing at her softly with his hands, reaching for the spot back of her ear. "I'll tickle _you_," he crowed, tussling with her, disarranging her hair, thudding his little body against her breast, as he thrashed about. The silent house rang with their laughter and cries.

They were both flushed, with l.u.s.trous eyes, when the little boy finally squirmed himself with a b.u.mp off the bed and slid to the floor.

At this point the kitten came walking in, innocent-eyed and grave. Mark scrambled towards her on his hands and knees. She retreated with a comic series of stiff-legged, sideways jumps, that made him roll on the floor, chuckling and giggling, and grabbing futilely for the kitten's paws.

Marise had stood up and was putting the loosened strands of her hair back in place. The spell was broken. Looking down on the laughing child, she said dutifully, "Mark, the floor's cold. You mustn't lie down on it.

And, anyhow, you're ever so late this morning. Hop up, dear, and get into your clothes."

"Oh, Mother, _you_ dress me!" he begged, rolling over to look up at her pleadingly.

She shook her head. "Now, Mark, that's silly. A great big boy like you, who goes to school. Get up quick and start right in before you take cold."

He scrambled to his feet and padded to her side on rosy bare feet.

"Mother, you'll have to 'tay here, anyhow. You know I can't do those back b.u.t.tons. And I always get my drawer-legs twisted up with my both legs inside my one leg."

Marise compromised. "Well, yes, if you'll hurry. But not if you dawdle.

Mother has a lot to do this morning. Remember, I won't help you with a single thing you can do yourself."

The child obediently unb.u.t.toned his pajamas and stepping out of them reached for his undershirt. His mother, looking at him, fell mentally on her knees before the beautiful, living body. "Oh, my son, the straight, strong darling! My precious little son!" She shook with that foolish aching anguish of mothers, intolerable... . "Why must he stop being so pure, so _safe_? How can I live when I am no longer strong enough to protect him?"

Mark remarked plaintively, shrugging himself into the sleeves of his shirt, "I've roden on a horse, and I've roden on a dog, and I've even roden on a cow, but I've never roden on a camel, and I _want_ to."

The characteristic Mark-like unexpectedness of this made her smile.

"You probably will, some day," she said, sitting down.

"But I've never even _sawn_ a camel," complained Mark. "And Elly and Paul have, and a elephant too."

"Well, you're big enough to be taken to the circus this year," his mother promised him. "This very summer we'll take you."

"But I want to go _now_!" clamored Mark, with his usual disregard of possibilities, done in the grand style.

"Don't dawdle," said his mother, looking around for something to read, so that she would seem less accessible to conversation. She found the newspaper under her hand, on the table, and picked it up. She had only glanced at the head-lines yesterday. It took a lot of moral courage to read the newspapers in these days. As she read, her face changed, darkened, set.

The little boy, struggling with his underwear, looked at her and decided not to ask for help.

She was thinking as she read, "The Treaty muddle worse than ever. Great Britain sending around to all her colonies asking for the biggest navy in the world. Our own navy constantly enlarged at enormous cost.

Constantinople to be left Turkish because n.o.body wants anybody else to have it. Armenian babies dying like flies and evening cloaks advertised to sell for six hundred dollars. Italy land-grabbing. France frankly for anything except the plain acceptance of the principles we thought the war was to foster. The same reaction from those principles starting on a grand scale in America. Men in prison for having an opinion ... what a hideous bad joke on all the world that fought for the Allies and for the holy principles they claimed! To think how we were straining every nerve in a sacred cause two years ago. Neale's enlistment. Those endless months of loneliness. That constant terror about him. And homes like that all over the world ... with _this_ as the result. Could it have been worse if we had all just grabbed what we could get for ourselves, and had what satisfaction we could out of the baser pleasures?"