AFTER all that had happened was it any wonder that what Alice wanted was a peaceful day, though if one pinned her down to it she would have had to confess that her notions of peace were very high? In fact they were so high it meant that for one whole day the children should cease disturbing her. If she could not get away on a visit, at least she wanted to be free from the sudden reprisal between Sara and Robert, no loud voiced squawkings from Sara for, when all was said and done, charming as Sara was, charming enough indeed to make her spend her life—or most of it—in trying to please, Sara was an awful squawker, so much so that it was one of those things that made both parents wonder secretly "where she got it from."
A peaceful day meant freedom from squawking, from insistently monotonous and nerve racking noises. Which meant somehow or other you must be out of earshot of Jamie's eternal tom-tomings, and the raids of Sara on Robert, and Robert on Sara, and Jamie on Sara, and so on throughout the six possible combinations. This all somehow or other had to be avoided.
This idea of a peaceful day had been as impossible as Alice's vacation. But now the time had come when she absolutely had to have one, because she had to write a paper for the Club on "Woman in Civic Life To-day," and to write a paper on this topic required freedom from interruption. It required freedom from all those casual runnings in and out of the children, freedom from the various—"Mother, where is?" "Mother, may
