THE cottage in which the Marceys lived was a quiet one; it was on the water, yet it seemed to Alice that the air was filled with distant clamor. Shouts and hoots pierced her consciousness, and across the field of her vision far out upon the sand flats there ran rollicking children. What meaning this had in her own life she did not realize until it was forced upon her by Robert, who was sitting a little way from her on the sand, instructing Sara. This in itself aroused suspicion, for Robert seldom taught Sara anything. He was teaching her to sing a song. Alice could not hear the words, but the air, vaguely familiar, called up to her mind something undesirable. Presently she heard Sara piping: "The high cost of living is only a joke, the high cost of loving"
"Where," she asked Robert, "where did you learn this song?"
"The people two houses down the beach," said Robert. "There are six of them, children I mean, and they've got a lovely phonograph. Every song they've got. I'm going to learn 'em all!"
Alice said nothing. It seemed as if, processionalwise, there trooped before her mind all the topical songs, songs about Little Girlie Coons, about My Filipino Baby, songs without exception, from a zealous mother's point of view, undesirable. Where did he get them? He seemed to absorb them through the pores. To Alice and to Tom Marcey they remained but vague hand-organ memories, never a word to them more than a bit of
