of one's existence like 'Ish kabibble,' and 'I'll say so.' Do you think it's any fun to bring up children to speak decent English, and then have their conversation strewn with 'ain'ts'? Do you think I like to hear Robert talking about his friends as 'de guys' and 'de ginks'? I told him if I ever heard him say 'de' for 'the' again that he would have to reckon with you. Do you suppose it was pleasant when he called me a 'short sport'? Jamie has made up a rhythm to 'kabibble'; and he sings: 'Ka-bibble, ka-bibble,' and since Sara has been playing with the Williams it is as if they had taken every 'g' she had in the world and thrown them out of the window."
"It is because you have been kept too closely at home," Tom finally announced, "that you mind it so much. You've been talking about going on a vacation by yourself the last five years. Now, will you finally go?"
"I think I will," Alice agreed. She wrote for rooms by the seashore. She made all her arrangements, and yet as the time for her departure approached, she saw with ever deeper clarity the shortcomings of her children's friends. She tried to be fair; she told herself repeatedly that her children's faults were just as bad as any one else's,—worse—but this remained in that realm of facts which one knows merely with the top of one's head.
Gladys Grayson would come and play with the Marceys, and, departing, she would leave behind her the horrid legacy, her whine. How Sue Grayson stood Gladys' whine was a thing Alice never could fathom. Her own children never whined, except after playing with Gladys, and then Alice could be sure that Sara at bedtime would say with a nasal drawl: "Do-I-have-to-go-to-bed?"
Alice could not face it. She knew what would happen when she got back. The g's would be gone for good; the
