ld to be
controlled and directed by authority. Her little girl was a big girl;
she had grown up and was eager to undertake the business of life on
her own behalf. But the period of Mrs. Makebelieve's motherhood had
drawn to a close, and her arms were empty. She was too used now to
being a mother to relinquish easily the prerogatives of that status,
and her discontent had this justification and assistance that it could
be put into definite words, fronted and approved or rejected as reason
urged. By knowledge and thought we will look through a stone wall if
we look long enough, for we see less through eyes than through Time.
Time is the clarifying perspective whereby myopia of any kind is
adjusted, and a thought emerges in its field as visibly as a tree does
in nature's. Mrs. Makebelieve saw seventeen years' apprenticeship to
maternity canceled automatically without an explanation or a courtesy,
and for a little time her world was in ruins, the ashes of existence
powdered her hair and her forehead. Then she discovered that the
debris was valuable in known currency; the dust was golden: her love
remained to her undisturbed and unlikely to be disturbed by whatever
event. And she discovered further that parentage is neither a game nor
a privilege but a duty; it is, astounding thought, the care of the
young until the young can take care of itself. It was for this freedom
only that her elaborate care had been necessary; her bud had blossomed
and she could add no more to its bloom or fragrance. Nothing had
happened that was not natural, and whoso opposes his brow against that
imperious urgency is thereby renouncing his kind and claiming a
kinship with the wild boar and the goat, which they, too, may
repudiate with leaden foreheads. There remained also the common human
equality, not alone of blood, but of sex also, which might be fostered
and grow to an intimacy more dear and enduring, more lovely and loving
than the necessarily one-sided devotions of parentage. Her duties in
that relationship having been performed, it was her daughter's turn to
take up her's and prove her rearing by repaying to her mother the
conscious love which intelligence and a good heart dictates. This
given, Mrs. Makebelieve could smile happily again, for her arms would
be empty only for a little time. The continuity of nature does not
fail saving for extraordinary instances. She sees to it that a breast
and an arm shall not very long be unoccupied, and, c