There was a moment while the joke slowly penetrated to Mark's six-year-old brain. And then he laughed out, delightedly, "Oh, Mother, that's a beaut! Sing it again. Sing it again! Now I know what's coming, I'll like it such a lots betterer." Marise cried out in indignant protest, "Mark! When I've sat here for ten minutes singing to you, and all the work to do, and the sun getting like red-hot fire every minute." "What must you got to do?" asked Mark, challengingly. "Well, the very first thing is to get dinner ready and in the fireless cooker, so we can turn out the oil-stove and cool off this terrible kitchen." Mark looked up at her and smiled. He had recently lost a front tooth and this added a quaintness to the splendor of his irresistible smile. "You could sing as you get the dinner ready," he said insinuatingly, "and I'll help you." Marise smothered an impulse to shout to the child, "No, no, go away! Go away! I can't have you bothering around. I've got to be by myself, or I don't know what will happen!" She thought of Toucle, off in the green and silent woods, in a blessed solitude. She thought of Eugenia up in her shaded room, stretched on the chaise-longue in a thin silk room-gown, she thought of Neale and his stern eyes . . . she looked down on the dusty, tanned, tousle-headed little boy, with the bandage around his head, his one eye looking up at her pleadingly, his dirty little hand clutching at the fold of her skirt; and drearily and unwillingly she summoned herself to self-control. "All right, Mark, that's true. I could sing while I peel the potatoes. You could wash them for me. That would help." They installed themselves for this work. The acrid smell of potato-parings rose in the furnace-like heat of the kitchen, along with the singing voice, asking and answering itself. Mark listened with all his might, laughing and wriggling with appreciation. When his mother had finished and was putting the potatoes into the boiling water, he said exultantly, "He got around _her_, all right, I should say what!" Paul burst in now, saying, "Mother, Mother!" He stopped short and asked, "What you got on your head, Mark?" The little boy looked surprised, put his hand up, felt the bandage, and said with an off-hand air, "Oh, I bunked my head on the corner of the swing-board." "I know," said Paul, "I've done it lots of times." He went on, "Mother, my pig has lice. You can just _see_ them crawling around under his hair. And I got out the oil Father said to use, but I can't do it. It says on the can to rub it on with a stiff little brush. I don't see how ever in the world you're going to get your pig to stand still while you do it. When I try to, he just squeals, and runs away."