Parents of three children, who do most of their own work besides, do not need to be told in detail what those four days meant.  Parents of three children know what the hours of, say, seven to nine mean, at home; nor does work stop at nine.  It is one mad whirl to get the family ears washed and teeth cleaned, and “Chew your mush!” and “Wipe your mouth!” and “Where’s your speller?” and “Jim, come back here and put on your rubbers!” ("Where are my rubbers?” Ach Gott! where?) Try six times to get the butcher—­line busy.  Breakfast dishes to clear up; baby to bathe, dress, feed.  Count the laundry.  Forget all about the butcher until fifteen minutes before dinner.  Laundry calls.  Telephone rings seven times.  Neighbor calls to borrow an egg.  Telephone the milkman for a pound of butter.  Make the beds,—­telephone rings in the middle,—­two beds do not get made till three.  Start lunch.  Wash the baby’s clothes.  Telephone rings three times while you are in the basement.  Rice burns.  Door-bell—­gas and electric bill.  Telephone rings.  Patch boys’ overalls.  Water-bill.  Stir the pudding.  Telephone rings.  Try to read at least the table of contents of the “New Republic.”  Neighbor calls to return some flour.  Stir the pudding again.  Mad stamping up the front steps.  Sons home.  Forget to scrape their feet.  Forget to take off their rubbers.  Dad’s whistle.  Hurray!  Lunch.—­Let’s stop about here, and return to Del Monte.

This is where music would help.  The Home motif would be—­I do not know those musical terms, but a lot of jumpy notes up and down the piano, fast and never catching up.  Del Monte motif slow, lazy melody—­ending with dance-music for night-time.  In plain English, what Del Monte meant was a care-free, absolutely care-free, jaunt into another world.  It was not our world,—­we could have been happy forever did we never lay eyes on Del Monte,—­and yet, oh, it was such fun!  Think of lazing in bed till eight or eight-thirty, then taking a leisurely bath, then dressing and deliberately using up time doing it—­put one shoe on and look at it a spell; then, when you are good and ready, put on the next.  Just feeling sort of spunky about it—­just wanting to show some one that time is nothing to you—­what’s the hurry?

Then—­oh, what motif in music could do a Del Monte breakfast justice?  Just yesterday you were gulping down a bite, in between getting the family fed and off.  Here you were, holding hands under the table to make sure you were not dreaming, while you took minutes and minutes to eat fruit and mush and eggs and coffee and waffles, and groaned to think there was still so much on the menu that would cost you nothing to keep on consuming, but where, oh, where, put it?  After rocking a spell in the sun on the front porch, the green Pierce Arrow appears, and all honk off for the day—­four boxes of picnic lunch stowed away by a gracious waiter; not a piece of bread for it did you have to spread yourself.  Basking in the sun under cypress trees, talking over every subject under heaven; back in time for a swim, a rest before dinner; then dinner (why, oh, why has the human such biological limitations?).  Then a concert, then dancing, then—­crowning glory of an unlimited bank-account—­Napa soda lemonade—­and bed.  Oh, what a four days!