that funny physical impressionableness of hers, that she could laugh at herself, but that still wrought on her, so that if measles were going the rounds, she could see symptoms of measles in everything the children did or didn’t do; or that well-known habit of hers, that even the children laughed about with her, of feeling things crawling all over her for hours after she had seen a caterpillar.  Well, that was only the other side of her extraordinary sensitiveness, that made her know how everybody was feeling, and what to do to make him feel better.  She had often said that she would certainly die if she ever tried to study medicine, because as fast as she read of a symptom she would have it, herself.  But she wouldn’t die.  She’d live and make a cracker-jack of a doctor, if she’d ever tried it, enough sight better than some callous brute of a boy with no imagination.

“One more song before bed-time,” announced Marise.  “And we’ll let Mark choose.  It’s his turn.”

A long silence, in which Neale amusedly divined Mark torn between his many favorites.  Finally the high sweet little treble, “Well, let’s make it ‘Down Among the Dead Men.’”

At which Neale laughed silently again.  What a circus the kids were!

The clock struck nine as they finished this, and Neale heard the stir and shifting of chairs.  Paul said, “Mother, Mr. Welles and I have fixed it up, that he’s going to put us to bed tonight, if you’ll let him.”  Amused surprise from Marise:  Mr. Welles’ voice saying he really would like it, never had seen any children in their nightgowns except in the movies; Paul saying, “Gracious!  We don’t wear nightgowns like women.  We wear pajamas!”; Mark’s voice crying, “We’ll show you how we play foot-fight on the rug.  We have to do that barefoot, so each one can tickle ourselves;” as usual, no sound from Elly probably still reveling in the proudness of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

A clatter of feet on the stairs, the chirping voices muffled by the shutting of a door overhead, and Eugenia’s voice, musical and carefully modulated, saying, “Well, Marisette, you look perfectly worn out with fatigue.  You haven’t looked a bit well lately, anyhow.  And I’m not surprised.  The way those children take it out of you!”

“Damn that woman!” thought Neale.  That sterile life of hers had starved out from her even the capacity to understand a really human existence when she saw it.  Not that she had ever seemed to have any considerable seed-bed of human possibilities to be starved, even in youth, if he could judge from his memory, now very dim, of how she had seemed to him in Rome, when he had first met her, along with Marise.  He remembered that he had said of her fantastically, to a fellow in the pension, that she reminded him of a spool of silk thread.  And now the silk thread had all been wound off, and there was only the bare wooden spool left.

“It’s not surprising that Mrs. Crittenden gets tired,” commented Marsh’s voice.  “She does the work of four or five persons.”