Monday morning I was again interrupted in my garden operations by a Whirlpooler, but the reason was quite different. The twins have gardens of their own, which are as individual and distinctive as their two selves. Richard delights in straight rows, well patted down between, and treats the small seeds that he plants with a sort of paternal patience. Ian disdains any seed smaller than a nasturtium or bean, whose growth is soon apparent, and has collected a motley assortment of bulbs, roots, and plants, without regard to size or season, and bordered his patch with onion sets for Corney Delaney's express benefit, the goat having a Gallic taste for highly flavoured morsels. Both boys are fairly patient with their own gardening operations, but their joy is to "help" me by handing tools, watering plants, and squirting insecticides, in my society and under my direction. Of course I could do it all much quicker by myself, and it has hampered me this spring, for last season they were too irresponsible to more than play work a few minutes at a time. Now I have come to the conclusion that it is their right to learn by helping me, and that it is the denial of companionship, either from selfishness or some absurd educational theory, that weakens the force of home ties later on. I have been frequently lectured by those older, but more especially "new mothers" younger than I, about staying with the boys at bedtime until they grow drowsy. "The baby is put to bed, and if he cries I pay no attention; it is only temper, not pain, for he stops the minute I speak to him," they say. I feel the blood rush to my face and the sting to my tongue always when I hear this. Not pain, not temper, but the unconscious yearning for companionship, for mother-love, is oftener the motive of the pitiful cry. Why should it be denied? The mother bird broods her young in the nest at twilight, and the father bird sings a lullaby to both. The kittens luxuriously sup themselves to sleep with the warm mother flesh responding to their seeking paws. In wild life I know not an animal who does not in some way soothe her young to sleep. Why should the human child, the son of man, be forced to live without the dream memories that linger about happy sleeping times? What can the vaunted discipline give to replace them? It is then, as they grow, and speech forms on their lips, that little confessions come out and wrongs are naturally righted through confidence, before they can sprout and grow. I was not quite five when I last watched mother sowing her flower seeds, and yet I remember to this day the way in which she did it, and so when it came time to give my bed of summer roses its first bath of whale oil, soap, and water, and the boys gave whoops of joy when they saw Bertel wheel out the tub and I appeared with the shining brass syringe, I resolved to let them have the questionable delight of administering the shower bath, even if it took all day.