Well, as soon as I had got to the stage where I could sit up and laugh, intermittently dabbing my eyes with a wad of handkerchief, we began a review of Johnnie's case. The boy has a morbid heredity, and may be slightly defective, says Sandy. We must deal with the fact as we would with any other disease. Even normal boys are often cruel. A child's moral sense is undeveloped at thirteen. Then he suggested that I bathe my eyes with hot water and resume my dignity. Which I did. And we had Johnnie in. He stood--by preference--through the entire interview. The doctor talked to him, oh, so sensibly and kindly and humanely! John put up the plea that the mouse was a pest and ought to be killed. The doctor replied that the welfare of the human race demanded the sacrifice of many animals for its own good, not for revenge, but that the sacrifice must be carried out with the least possible hurt to the animal. He explained about the mouse's nervous system, and how the poor little creature had no means of defense. It was a cowardly thing to hurt it wantonly. He told John to try to develop imagination enough to look at things from the other person's point of view, even if the other person was only a mouse. Then he went to the bookcase and took down my copy of Burns, and told the boy what a great poet he was, and how all Scotchmen loved his memory. "And this is what he wrote about a mouse," said Sandy, turning to the "Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, timorous beastie," which he read and explained to the lad as only a Scotchman could. Johnnie departed penitent, and Sandy redirected his professional attention to me. He said I was tired and in need of a change. Why not go to the Adirondacks for a week? He and Betsy and Mr. Witherspoon would make themselves into a committee to run the asylum. You know, that's exactly what I was longing to do! I need a shifting of ideas and some pine-scented air. My family opened the camp last week, and think I'm awful not to join them. They won't understand that when you accept a position like this you can't casually toss it aside whenever you feel like it. But for a few days I can easily manage. My asylum is wound up like an eight-day clock, and will run until a week from next Monday at 4 P.M., when my train will return me. Then I shall be comfortably settled again before you arrive, and with no errant fancies in my brain. Meanwhile Master John is in a happily chastened frame of mind and body. And I rather suspect that Sandy's moralizing had the more force because it was preceded by my pancake turner! But one thing I know--Suzanne Estelle is terrified whenever I step into her kitchen. I casually picked up the potato-masher this morning while I was commenting upon last night's over-salty soup, and she ran to cover behind the woodshed door.