His mother said with decision, from where she stooped before the open ice-box door, "Paul, if there is anything in the world I know nothing about, it is pigs. I haven't the slightest idea what to do." She shut the heavy door with a bang more energetic than was necessary to latch it, and came back towards the stove with a raw, red piece of uncooked meat on a plate. "Oh, how nasty meat looks, raw," said Mark, with an accent of disgust. "You eat it with a good appetite when I've cooked it," remarked his mother, somewhat grimly, putting it in a hot pan over the fire. An odor of searing fibers and smoke and frying onions rose up in the hot, still air of the kitchen. "If I could have guessed we'd have such weather, I'd never have ordered a pot-roast," thought Marise, vexed. "Please, Mother, _please_," begged Paul. "Please what?" asked his mother, who had forgotten the pig. "Henry!" said Paul. "If you could see how he scratches and scratches and how the behind of his ears is all scabs he's so bitten." "Wouldn't Eugenia and Vincent Marsh love this conversation?" thought Marise, turning the meat in the pan and starting back from the spatters of hot fat. "Mother, don't you see, I agreed to take care of him, with Father, and so I _have_ to. He's just like my child. You wouldn't let one of _us_ have lice all over, and scabs on our . . ." "Oh stop, Paul, for Heaven's sake!" said his mother. Through the smoke and smell and heat, the sensation of her underclothing sticking hotly to her limbs, the constant dogging fear and excitement that beset her, and the causeless twanging of her nerves, there traveled to her brain, along a channel worn smooth by the habit of her thought about the children, the question, "What is it that makes Paul care so much about this?" And the answer, almost lost in the reverberation of all those other questions and answers in her head, was, "It comes from what is best in Paul, his feeling of personal responsibility for the welfare of others. That mustn't be hindered." Aloud, almost automatically, she said, in a neutral tone, "Paul, I don't think I can do a single thing for you and Henry, but I'll go with you and look at him and see if I can think of anything. Just wait till I get this and the potatoes in the fireless cooker." Paul made a visible effort, almost as though he were swallowing something too large for his throat, and said ungraciously, "I suppose I ought to help you in here, then." "I suppose so," said his mother roughly, in an exact imitation of his manner. Paul looked at her quickly, laughing a little, sheepishly. He waited a moment, during which time Mark announced that he was going out to the sand-pile, and then said, in a pleasant tone, "What can I do?"