“Something terrible,” she said, laughing. This was the real laughter she had hoped for. She seemed lifted, purged, held in a twinkling skein of mirth. Laughter, like flame, purifies. Certainly he was adorable, but she couldn’t quite make him out. Why should he, who evidently enjoyed horrifying others, be so suddenly aghast himself? Plainly he was making fun of her: but she could see he was the kind of person who would not try, clumsily, to say the things that ought never to be said. For every woman knows all these things anyway, and prefers to say them herself. There was a clatter on the veranda, three serial slams of the screen door, quick crunching of gravel, the children. How she loved them, the gay flutter of their short dresses, the brown slender legs gradually paling toward their soft fat little hams. They came running across the lawn, knees lifting and shining in the brilliant light. They surrounded her in a hot laughing group, breathlessly explaining some plan. Daddy was going to take them swimming, if there was a storm they could go into the bath house, it wouldn’t matter anyway if they had their bathing suits on, Daddy would play Moby Dick the White Whale. The words came tumbling out of them, they seemed packed with words, bursting with a vision of green warm water scalloped with foam, Daddy the White Whale snorting in the surf, the prickling terror of storm darkening the sky. What vitality, what career of the spirit of life! “Children, children, don’t forget your manners. Make a nice curtsey to Mr. Martin.” At once they became well-regulated little dolls. What a picture, she thought: The Curtsey ... the three children bobbing, their mother in the background, supervising as it were: seeing that Life kept within bounds, did no violence to the harmony of the composition. Because (heavens!) it was bad enough for _her_ to feel as she did: she couldn’t endure the thought of Janet and Sylvia and Rose growing up to such--such disorders. If they were painted like that, curtseying, of course the pose would be difficult to hold. But all poses are difficult to hold. “I don’t know that I like the idea of your bathing with a storm coming on,” she said. That was George, putting wild schemes in their heads. If she forbade it now, there would be tears---- “It’s what we’re all doing, all the time,” said George. He had come quietly across the grass while she was showing the children off to Martin. This was so surprisingly subtle, for George, she scanned him in amazement. He looked like An Anchor to Windward, A Stitch in Time, Something Put By for a Rainy Day. No one ever looked less like a Leap in the Dark. In short, he looked like a Husband: large, strong, reliable, long-suffering, and uninteresting. The best way to look, probably (she thought), for the interesting people have such a painful time. “It was a telegram from Miss Clyde,” he said. “She’s coming this afternoon. Same train as the Brooks.”