The baby I found perhaps more interesting than his little brother, for the baby’s moods had more style to them. The brother could be transformed from golden prattlingness to raging storm, with the most disconcerting quickness. He could want the most irrational things with an intensity that got itself expressed in hypnotic reiteration. Some smoldering will-to-power in one’s self told one that a child should never be given the thing that he most wanted; and yet in five minutes one would have given him one’s soul, to be rid of the brazen rod which he pounded through one. But I could not keep away from him. He and his baby brother absorbed me, and when I contemplated their mother’s life, I had many a solemn sense of the arduousness of being a parent. I thought of the long years ahead of them, and the incalculability of their manifestations. I shuddered and remained, gloating, I am afraid, a little over the opportunity of enjoyment without responsibility. All these things I was recounting the other evening after dinner to a group of friends who professionally look after the minds and bodies of the neglected. I was explaining my absorption, and the perils and merciless tyranny of the mother’s life, and my thankfulness at having been so much in, and yet so much not of, the child-world. I was not responsible, and the policeman mother could be called in at any time to soothe or to quell. I could always maintain the amused aloofness which is my usual attitude toward children. And I made the point that parenthood must become less arduous after the child is a self-regulating little organism, and can be trusted not to commit suicide inadvertently over every threshold, can feed himself, dress himself, and take himself reasonably around. I even suggested unwarily that after five or six the tyranny was much mitigated. There was strong dissent. Just at that age, I was told, the real responsibilities began. I was living in a fool’s paradise of bachelordom if I thought that at six children were grown-up. One of the women before the fire made it her business to get children adopted. I had a sense of foreboding before she spoke. She promptly confirmed my intuition by offering to endow me with an infant of six years, for a day or for as long as I would take him. The hearty agreement of the rest amazed and alarmed me. They seemed delighted at the thought of my becoming parent for a day. I should have Ernest. They all knew Ernest; and I should have him. They seemed to have no concern that he would not survive my brief parenthood. It rather warmed and flattered me to think that they trusted me.