As he closed the door he heard the shrieks trailing off round the corner of the house, diminuendo. He hung up coat and hat with a rapid gesture and hurried to the kitchen. Hilda, stirring the cocoa with a long spoon, looked round at him laconically. “Chocolate!” he shouted, and pulled a cake of chocolate out of his pocket. He was astonished, he rolled his eyes, for it appeared to have been sat upon--“in the train.” Hilda shrieked with laughter. He thrust it into her apron pocket and fled up the stairs to change. He could not find his old flannel trousers. Not in the cupboard--not in the bureau. He surrendered to an impulse to comic rage. “Not under the bed!” he cried. He thrust his head out of the window that overlooked the garden and addressed his children. “Martha! Bring my trousers here this instant!” He drew in his head again from the shower of replies that flew up at him like missiles and going to the door roared down to his wife. “I’ve lost my trousers!” Then he found them in the closet behind the door and, laughing, put them on. II He ran out of the side door, under the wistaria-covered trellis, and down the slippery stone steps to the vegetable garden. “Here comes daddy, now,” shrilled to him from Martha. He lighted his pipe, shutting his left eye, and stood in profound meditation before the orderly, dignified, and extraordinarily vigorous rows of beans. They were in blossom--bees were tumbling the delicate lilac-pink little hoods. Clouds of fragrance came up from them. The crickets were beginning to tune up for the evening. The sun was poised above the black water tower on the far hill. Martha and Marjorie began giggling mysteriously behind the lilacs. “My hoe!” he wailed. The hoe was thrust out from behind the lilacs. “If anybody should drive up in a scarlet taxi,” he said to Martha, accepting the hoe, “and inform you that your soul is free, don’t believe him. Tell him he’s a liar. Point me out to him as a symbol of the abject slavery that all life is. Say that I’m a miserable thrall to wife, children, and beans--particularly beans. I spend my days on my knees before my beans.” “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Martha. He held his hoe under his arm and walked solemnly among the beans. The two girls followed him. “Here’s a caterpillar, daddy!” “Kill him!” “Here’s another--a funny green one with red sparkles on his back. Oh, look at him!” “Don’t look at him! Kill him!” “He squirts out like green tooth-paste.” “Don’t, Martha!” he cried, pained. “Don’t say such things! Spare your neurotic father.”