“Awn ge’ down,” said Paul, distinctly, every fibre of his small being headed, as it were, for the pebbly shingle where it was daily his delight to dig.

“But say ‘deck’ first, sweetheart, say ‘Deck, I love you,’” besought the mistress of the Hall.

“Deck!” shouted Paul obediently, eyes on the river.

“And a sweet kiss!” further stipulated Mrs. Burgoyne, and grabbed it from his small, red, unresponsive mouth before she let him toddle away.  “Yes,” she resumed, going on with the tucking of a small skirt, “Joanna and Jeanette and the Adams boy have to write an essay this week about the Battle of Bunker Hill, so I read them Holmes’ poem, and they acted it all out.  You never saw anything so delicious.  Mrs. Lloyd came up just in time to see Mabel limping about as the old Corporal!  The cherry tree was the steeple, of course, and both your sons, you’ll be ashamed to hear, were redcoats.  Next week they expect to do Paul Revere, and I daresay we’ll have the entire war, before we’re through.  You are both cordially invited.”

“I’ll come,” said the doctor’s wife, smiling.  “I love this garden.  And to take care of the boys and have a good time myself is more than I ever thought I’d do in this life!”

“I live on this bank,” said Mrs. Burgoyne, leaning back luxuriously in her big chair, to stare idly up through the apple-tree to the blue sky.  “I’m going to teach the children all their history and poetry and myths, out here.  It makes it so real to them, to act it.  Jo and Ellen and I read Barbara Frietchie out here a few weeks ago, and they’ve wanted it every day or two, since.”

“We won’t leave anything for the schools to do,” said little Mrs. Brown.

“All the better,” Mrs. Burgoyne said, cheerfully.

“Well, excuse me!” Mrs. Lloyd, holding the linen cuff she was embroidering at arm’s length, and studying it between half-closed lids.  “I am only too glad to turn Mabel over to somebody else part of the time.  You don’t know what she is when she begins to ask questions!”

“I don’t know anything more tiring than being with children day in and day out,” said Mrs. Brown, “it gets frightfully on your nerves!”

“Oh, I’d like about twelve!” said Mrs. Burgoyne.

“Oh, Mrs. Burgoyne!  You wouldn’t!”

“Yes, I would, granted a moderately secure income, and a rather roomy country home.  Although,” added Mrs. Burgoyne, temperately, “I do honestly think twelve children is too big a family.  However, one may be greedy in wishes!”

“Would you want a child of yours to go without proper advantages,” said Mrs. Lloyd, a little severely, “would you want more than one or two, if you honestly felt you couldn’t give them all that other children have?  Would you be perfectly willing to have your children feel at a disadvantage with all the children of your friends?  I wouldn’t,” she answered herself positively, “I want to do the best by Mabel, I want her to have everything, as she grows up, that a girl ought to have.  That’s why all this nonsense about the size of the American family makes me so tired!  What’s the use of bringing a lot of children into the world that are going to suffer all sorts of privations when they get here?”