“So I said I’d love to stay and look after the little ones.  I wanted to stay.  Shopping in New York City the day before, two bargain sales—­one being hand-embroidered Swiss waists from two-ninety-eight upward—­I felt as if a stampede of longhorns had caught me.  Darned near bedfast I was!  Say, talk about the pale, weak, nervous city woman with exhausted vitality!  See ’em in action first, say I. There was a corn-fed hussy in a plush bonnet with forget-me-nots, two hundred and thirty or forty on the hoof, that exhausted my vitality all right—­no holds barred, an arm like first-growth hick’ry across my windpipe, and me up against a solid pillar of structural ironwork!  Once I was wrastled by a cinnamon bear that had lately become a mother; but the poor old thing would have lost her life with this dame after the hand-embroidereds.  Gee!  I was lame in places I’d lived fifty-eight years and never knew I had.

“So off went these ladies, with Mrs. L.H.  Cummins giving me special and private warning to be sure and keep Junior well out of it in case little mischievous Margery started anything that would be likely to kill her.  And I looked forward to a quiet day on the lounge, where I could ache in peace and read the ‘Famous Crimes of History,’ which the W.B.’s had in twelve volumes—­you wouldn’t have thought there was that many, would you?  I dressed soft, out of respect to my corpse, and picked out a corking volume of these here Crimes and lay on the big lounge by an open window where the breeze could soothe me and where I could keep tabs on the little ones at their sports; and everything went as right as if I had been in some A-Number-One hospital where I had ought to of been.

“Lunchtime come before I knew it; and I had mine brought to my bed of pain by the Swede on a tray, while the kids et theirs in an orderly and uproarious manner in the dining-room.  Rupert, Junior, was dressed like one of these boy scouts and had his air gun at the table with him, and little Margery was telling him there was, too, fairy princes all round in different places; and she bet she could find one any day she wanted to.  They seemed to be all safe enough, so I took up my Crimes again.  Really, ain’t history the limit?—­the things they done in it and got away with—­never even being arrested or fined or anything!

“Pretty soon I could hear the merry prattle of the little ones again out in the side yard.  Ain’t it funny how they get the gambling spirit so young?  I’d hear little Margery say:  ‘I bet you can’t!’ And Rupert, Junior, would say:’  I bet I can, too!’ And off they’d go ninety miles on a straight track:  ’I bet you’d be afraid to!’—­’I bet I wouldn’t be!’—­’I bet you’d run as fast!’—­’I bet I never would!’ Ever see such natural-born gamblers?  And it’s all about what Rupert, Junior, would do if he seen a big tiger in some woods—­Rupert betting he’d shoot it dead, right between the eyes, and Margery taking the other end.  She has by far the best end of it, I think, it being at least a forty-to-one shot that Rupert, the boy scout, is talking high and wide.  And I drop into the Crimes again at a good, murderous place with stilettos.