t-eyed and grave. Mark
scrambled towards her on his hands and knees. She retreated with a comic
series of stiff-legged, sideways jumps, that made him roll on the floor,
chuckling and giggling, and grabbing futilely for the kitten's paws.

Marise had stood up and was putting the loosened strands of her hair
back in place. The spell was broken. Looking down on the laughing child,
she said dutifully, "Mark, the floor's cold. You mustn't lie down on it.
And, anyhow, you're ever so late this morning. Hop up, dear, and get
into your clothes."

"Oh, Mother, _you_ dress me!" he begged, rolling over to look up at her
pleadingly.

She shook her head. "Now, Mark, that's silly. A great big boy like you,
who goes to school. Get up quick and start right in before you take
cold."

He scrambled to his feet and padded to her side on rosy bare feet.
"Mother, you'll have to 'tay here, anyhow. You know I can't do those
back buttons. And I always get my drawer-legs twisted up with my both
legs inside my one leg."

Marise compromised. "Well, yes, if you'll hurry. But not if you dawdle.
Mother has a lot to do this morning. Remember, I won't help you with a
single thing you can do yourself."

The child obediently unbuttoned his pajamas and stepping out of them
reached for his undershirt. His mother, looking at him, fell mentally on
her knees before the beautiful, living body. "Oh, my son, the straight,
strong darling! My precious little son!" She shook with that foolish
aching anguish of mothers, intolerable. . . . "Why must he stop being so
pure, so _safe_? How can I live when I am no longer strong enough to
protect him?"

Mark remarked plaintively, shrugging himself into the sleeves of his
shirt, "I've roden on a horse, and I've roden on a dog, and I've even
roden on a cow, but I've never roden on a camel, and I _want_ to."

The characteristic Mark-like unexpectedness of this made her smile.

"You probably will, some day," she said, sitting down.

"But I've never even _sawn_ a camel," complained Mark. "And Elly and
Paul have, and a elephant too."

"Well, you're big enough to be taken to the circus this year," his
mother promised him. "This very summer we'll take you."

"But I want to go _now_!" clamored Mark, with his usual disregard of
possibilities, done in the grand style.

"Don't dawdle," said his mother, looking around for something to read,
so that she would seem less accessible to conversation. She found the
newspaper