n, NO."

She went on with a heavy, mock solemnity, in the loud voice,

"Oh, hark, I hear the church-bells ringing;
Will you come and be my wife?"

She pinned the bandage in place at the back of Mark's head,

"Or, dear Madam, have you settled
To live single all your life?"

She gathered the child up to her, his head on her shoulder, his face
turned to her, his bare, dusty, wiry little legs wriggling and soiling
her white skirt; and sang, rollickingly,

"Oh no, John, no, John, NO!"

"There, that's all," she said in her natural voice, looking down at
Mark. She said to herself rebelliously, "I've expended enough
personality and energy on this performance to play a Beethoven sonata at
a concert," and found she was quoting something Vincent Marsh had said
about her life, the day before.

There was a moment while the joke slowly penetrated to Mark's
six-year-old brain. And then he laughed out, delightedly, "Oh, Mother,
that's a beaut! Sing it again. Sing it again! Now I know what's coming,
I'll like it such a lots betterer."

Marise cried out in indignant protest, "Mark! When I've sat here for ten
minutes singing to you, and all the work to do, and the sun getting like
red-hot fire every minute."

"What must you got to do?" asked Mark, challengingly.

"Well, the very first thing is to get dinner ready and in the fireless
cooker, so we can turn out the oil-stove and cool off this terrible
kitchen."

Mark looked up at her and smiled. He had recently lost a front tooth and
this added a quaintness to the splendor of his irresistible smile. "You
could sing as you get the dinner ready," he said insinuatingly, "and
I'll help you."

Marise smothered an impulse to shout to the child, "No, no, go away! Go
away! I can't have you bothering around. I've got to be by myself, or I
don't know what will happen!" She thought of Toucle, off in the green
and silent woods, in a blessed solitude. She thought of Eugenia up in
her shaded room, stretched on the chaise-longue in a thin silk
room-gown, she thought of Neale and his stern eyes . . . she looked down
on the dusty, tanned, tousle-headed little boy, with the bandage around
his head, his one eye looking up at her pleadingly, his dirty little
hand clutching at the fold of her skirt; and drearily and unwillingly
she summoned herself to self-control. "All right, Mark, that's true. I
could sing while I peel the potatoes. You could wash them for me. That
w