she was sure about: their faces were all dimples! Moreover, they were
much more becoming to them than ordinary features would have been.

"How old are they?" asked Sara, in the most delighted bewilderment.
The friendly little things fluttered and chattered and chirruped
around her in the most distracting way, brushing her face with their
wings in their eagerness to get acquainted, and even getting their
silver sandals tangled in her hair.

"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 wa