laughter. I began biting at her
ankles ... at the calves of her legs ... "oof! oof! I'm going crazy
too!" She squealed, delighted, her mind taken off her troubles ... she
struck me on the head with her open hands, to keep me off ... I bowled
her over with a swift, upward jump ... I picked her up and carried her
off, kissing her.

* * * * *

"My darling big rascal ... my own Johnnie Gregory!" She caught me fondly
by the hair, "I can't do anything with you at all!"

Once again, waking me up in the middle of the night:

"Johnnie, I--I have a dreadful impulse, an impulse to hit you ... I just
can't help it, Johnnie dear! I must do it!" and she fetched me a very
neat blow in the face.

"You don't mind, do you ... having your own little girl hit you?"

Now, poor Penton would have spent the remainder of the night taking
this "impulse" and the act which followed it as a serious problem in
aesthetics, economics, feminism, and what-not ... and the two would have
talked and discussed, their voices sounding and sounding in philosophic
disquisition ... and, before the end, Hildreth, persuaded to take the
situation seriously and enjoying the morbid attention given her,
Hildreth would have gone off several times into hysterics....

My procedure was a different one:

"--of course I don't mind you following your impulses ... you should ...
but also I have just as imperative an impulse--now that you suggest
it--to hit you."

And I was not chary of the vigorous blows I dealt her, a tattoo of them
on her back....

"Why, Johnnie," she gasped, "you--hit--me!" and her big eyes, wide with
hurt, filled with tears. And she cried a little....

"There, there, dear!" I soothed. Then, with a solemn look in my face, "I
couldn't resist my impulse, either."

"You mustn't do that any more, Johnnie ... but,--you must let _me_ hit
_you_ whenever I want to."

But she never had that "impulse" again.

* * * * *

But, though we romped a lot, Darrie, Hildreth, Daniel, and I,--and
though Hildreth called me her "Bearcat" (the only thing she took from
the papers, whose title for me was "The Kansas Bearcat") don't think
that this made up all our life in our cottage....

In the morning, after breakfast, which Daniel and I usually ate together
alone, we being the early risers of the household--I repaired to the
large attic and wrote on my play. Then frequently I read and studied
till