Frances does not comprehend her cynical father; and so we move along. She says that her mother told her to tell me that we could take plenty of time to look at the toys, as mother had to be fitted for two gowns. Sam declares that he wishes I would buy him that big boat over yonder. And he tugs me off by the other hand to examine it, but on the way our attention is diverted by a remarkable looking doll which Frances has discovered. Sam forgets his boat and decides to stand and stare at the doll. I confess this doll is attractive, for she seems to be precisely what she pretends to be. So I buy her and give her to Frances, and then the three of us make more headway. We get as far as the pop-gun counter. I never did like pop-guns. They are too symbolical. But Sam pulls me down to him and whispers: “Dada, pease get me one. I need it.” His little fat fingers stroke my face and persuade me in spite of myself. How often does he remind me of his mother! He has the same helpless, beseeching manner with which Susanne has always managed to get what she wanted. Then we succeeded nicely. We got past the sleds and the hobby-horses and the moolley-cows and the dreary donkeys. I never knew how we did it. But Sam threw out an anchor when we reached the marbles. Those huge crystals and beautiful agates were too much for him. “Dada, pease buy me some.” “How many, my son?” “All’s you can.” “Well, give us a boxful;” I said to the indifferent clerk. Imagine being indifferent in a toy store, surrounded by little children. Here is certainly the one place where I would search for the Fountain of Eternal Youth. But now it is time to meet mother, and we picked up the doll and the pop-gun, and scurried off through the other shoppers. My two children snuggled close to me. The door opened and in walked old Sandy, carrying a fresh pitcher of sangaree. I was startled into my senses. “You drove them away, Sandy.” “What I done do, maarstar?” “You drove them away. I was out shopping with Miss Susan and the children.” Sandy thinks that my brain is “addled,” as he calls it, and so he makes no further answer. Children! My children! The dream children whom poor Charles Lamb saw. And how many other lonely folk have seen them? Look at that shelf of books there; see that volume bound in limp leather? That was my first book. You did not know that I was a writer, did you, Sandy? Yes, but I was. And when I wrote that book I thought that I knew more than I did. It is about young love and interfering parents and selfish relatives and romantic folk who went astray. It is crude, very crude; but I love the book, for it was my first-born. I thought of recasting it, and then I found that one can not mangle his own child.