aid Mr. Welles, loyally. "Though
perhaps he does try to give you a little too much at one sitting."

"Mr. Welles," said Paul, with his mouth full, "fishing season begins in
ten days."

Marise decided that she would really have to have a rest from telling
Paul not to talk with food in his mouth, and said nothing.

Mr. Welles confessed that he had never gone fishing in his life, and
asked if Paul would take him.

"Sure!" said Paul. "Mother and I go, lots."

Mr. Marsh looked at Marise inquiringly. "Yes," she said, "I'm a
confirmed fisherman. Some of the earliest and happiest recollections I
have, are of fishing these brooks when I was a little girl."

"Here?" asked Mr. Welles. "I thought you lived in France."

"There's time in a child's life to live in various places," she
explained. "I spent part of my childhood and youth here with my dear old
cousin. The place is full of associations for me. Will you have your
spinach now, or later? It'll keep hot all right if you'd rather wait."

"What is this delicious dish?" asked Mr. Marsh. "It tastes like a man's
version of creamed chicken, which is always a little too lady-like for
me."

"It's a _blanquette de veau_, and you may be sure I learned to make it
in one of the French incarnations, not a Vermont one."

Paul stirred and asked, "Mother, where _is_ Mark? He'll be late for
school, if he doesn't hurry."

"That's so," she said, and reflected how often one used that phrase in
response to one of Paul's solid and unanswerable statements.

Mark appeared just then and she began to laugh helplessly. His hands
were wetly, pinkly, unnaturally clean, but his round, rosy, sunny little
face was appallingly streaked and black.

Paul did not laugh. He said in horrified reproach, "Oh, Mark! You never
_touched_ your face! It's piggy dirty."

Mark was staggered for a moment, but nothing staggered him long. "I
don't get microbes off my face into my food," he said calmly. "And you
bet there aren't any microbes left on my hands." He went on, looking at
the table disapprovingly, "Mother, there isn't a many on the table
_this_ day, and I wanted a many."

"The stew's awful good," said Paul, putting away a large quantity.

"'Very,' not 'awful,' and don't hold your fork like that," corrected
Marise, half-heartedly, thinking that she herself did not like the
insipid phrase "very good" nor did she consider the way a fork was held
so very essential to salvation. "How much of life is co