She reached for the cold wet compress and went on, singing loudly and boldly, with a facetious wag of her head, (how tired she was of all this manoeuvering!),

     “Then I will stay with you forever
     If you will not be unkind.”

She applied the cold compress on the hurt spot and put out her hand for the bandage-roll, singing with an ostentatiously humorous accent and thinking with exasperation how all this was delaying her in the thousand things to do in the house,

     “Madam, I have vowed to love you;
     Would you have me change my mind?”

She wound the bandage around and around the little boy’s head, so that it held the compress in place, singing in the high, sweet voice,

     “Oh no, John, no, John, NO.”

She went on with a heavy, mock solemnity, in the loud voice,

     “Oh, hark, I hear the church-bells ringing;
     Will you come and be my wife?”

She pinned the bandage in place at the back of Mark’s head,

     “Or, dear Madam, have you settled
     To live single all your life?”

She gathered the child up to her, his head on her shoulder, his face turned to her, his bare, dusty, wiry little legs wriggling and soiling her white skirt; and sang, rollickingly,

     “Oh no, John, no, John, NO!”

“There, that’s all,” she said in her natural voice, looking down at Mark.  She said to herself rebelliously, “I’ve expended enough personality and energy on this performance to play a Beethoven sonata at a concert,” and found she was quoting something Vincent Marsh had said about her life, the day before.

There was a moment while the joke slowly penetrated to Mark’s six-year-old brain.  And then he laughed out, delightedly, “Oh, Mother, that’s a beaut!  Sing it again.  Sing it again!  Now I know what’s coming, I’ll like it such a lots betterer.”

Marise cried out in indignant protest, “Mark!  When I’ve sat here for ten minutes singing to you, and all the work to do, and the sun getting like red-hot fire every minute.”

“What must you got to do?” asked Mark, challengingly.

“Well, the very first thing is to get dinner ready and in the fireless cooker, so we can turn out the oil-stove and cool off this terrible kitchen.”

Mark looked up at her and smiled.  He had recently lost a front tooth and this added a quaintness to the splendor of his irresistible smile.  “You could sing as you get the dinner ready,” he said insinuatingly, “and I’ll help you.”

Marise smothered an impulse to shout to the child, “No, no, go away!  Go away!  I can’t have you bothering around.  I’ve got to be by myself, or I don’t know what will happen!” She thought of Toucle, off in the green and silent woods, in a blessed solitude.  She thought of Eugenia up in her shaded room, stretched on the chaise-longue in a thin silk room-gown, she thought of Neale and his stern eyes . . . she looked down on the dusty, tanned, tousle-headed little boy, with the bandage around his head, his one eye looking up at her pleadingly, his dirty little hand clutching at the fold of her skirt; and drearily and unwillingly she summoned herself to self-control.  “All right, Mark, that’s true.  I could sing while I peel the potatoes.  You could wash them for me.  That would help.”