“Well,” said Avrillia with great exactitude—­Sara had already discovered that Avrillia had a weakness for being considered practical—­“fourteen of them are six and three of them are two and thirty are seven and ten are nine, and five are six months.”

“My!” said Sara, in doubt and wonder.  And right there she had a suspicion that that was one reason she had loved Avrillia from the first:  she couldn’t do arithmetic!  To be sure, Sara herself couldn’t add all that mixture in her head—­at least not with all those lovely children about—­but it sounded like a great deal more than seventy; and there certainly looked to be a million.  So, as she stood and gazed, she said, more in wonder than with any idea of correcting Avrillia, “And you said there were just seventy?”

For a moment Avrillia’s eyes again grew distraught and doubtful, and she answered, uncertainly, “I think there are just seventy.”  Then she called to Pirlaps, who was sitting on his step in the light of a glorious flame-colored fog-bush, hard at work, “Pirlaps, have we had any children since Sara was here yesterday?”

“Not one,” said Pirlaps, smiling at her with a look of pleasant amusement.  “Don’t you remember that you dropped poems over the Verge all day?”

“I thought so,” said Avrillia, with relief, “but Sara seemed to think there were more than seventy.”  Then her eyes fell upon the trousers of Pirlaps, who had risen and was coming toward them now, with Yassuh rolling along behind with the step.

“O Pirlaps,” said Avrillia, her sweet voice full of reproach, “you haven’t changed your trousers!  That’s just the way things go,” she added, beginning to look wild and worried and distraught, “when the children are here!  I can’t keep up with everything!  And the thermometer went off fifteen minutes ago!  I heard it, but I was busy with the children.  And your shaving-water will be perfectly cold!” She grew more and more agitated.

“Never mind, Avrillia,” said Pirlaps, soothingly, and Sara noticed that his pleasant, cheerful ways always had a wonderfully calming effect upon Avrillia.  “I’m going right in now to change; and then I have a plan that will straighten things out and please everybody.”

“What is it?” asked Avrillia, looking more hopeful.

“It’s too soon to tell yet,” said Pirlaps, with a delightfully wise air, and he went on up the steps, with Yassuh tumbling after him, leaving them all feeling very much relieved.

Avrillia, making a brave effort to recover her composure, began playing with the children again, and they were having almost as delightful a time as if nothing distressing had occurred, when Pirlaps reappeared, all fresh-shaven and immaculate.

“Put the step out in the sun where it will keep soft, Yassuh,” he said.  “I shan’t need it this afternoon.”

They all stopped playing and looked at him in wonder.

“I’m going to take Sara to see my relations, as I promised her I would,” he explained, taking Sara kindly by the hand.