My own dressing is not always completed by two o’clock.  I have no faith in mothers whose rooms are in apple-pie order, and who themselves might have stepped out of a bandbox.  Yesterday was one of those lovely days of early April, and I wanted to take my children for a walk, while I was still able—­for the warning bell is in my ears.  Such an expedition is quite an epic to a mother!  One dreams of it the night before!  Armand was for the first time to put on a little black velvet jacket, a new collar which I had worked, a Scotch cap with the Stuart colors and cock’s feathers; Nais was to be in white and pink, with one of those delicious little baby caps; for she is a baby still, though she will lose that pretty title on the arrival of the impatient youngster, whom I call my beggar, for he will have the portion of a younger son. (You see, Louise, the child has already appeared to me in a vision, so I know it is a boy.)

Well, caps, collars, jackets, socks, dainty little shoes, pink garters, the muslin frock with silk embroidery,—­all was laid out on my bed.  Then the little brown heads had to be brushed, twittering merrily all the time like birds, answering each other’s call.  Armand’s hair is in curls, while Nais’ is brought forward softly on the forehead as a border to the pink-and-white cap.  Then the shoes are buckled; and when the little bare legs and well-shod feet have trotted off to the nursery, while two shining faces (clean, Mary calls them) and eyes ablaze with life petition me to start, my heart beats fast.  To look on the children whom one’s own hand has arrayed, the pure skin brightly veined with blue, that one has bathed, laved, and sponged and decked with gay colors of silk or velvet—­why, there is no poem comes near to it!  With what eager, covetous longing one calls them back for one more kiss on those white necks, which, in their simple collars, the loveliest woman cannot rival.  Even the coarsest lithograph of such a scene makes a mother pause, and I feast my eyes daily on the living picture!

Once out of doors, triumphant in the result of my labors, while I was admiring the princely air with which little Armand helped baby to totter along the path you know, I saw a carriage coming, and tried to get them out of the way.  The children tumbled into a dirty puddle, and lo! my works of art are ruined!  We had to take them back and change their things.  I took the little one in my arms, never thinking of my own dress, which was ruined, while Mary seized Armand, and the cavalcade re-entered.  With a crying baby and a soaked child, what mind has a mother left for herself?