was drying in her pen. She sat, listening to the drama that was going on down-stairs—the tiny, tiny, piteous little noises that seemed no bigger than those of a mouse, followed by awful explosions.
"You—you Juggernaut!" thought Alice.
The Voice was heard again, and after the Voice there arose to Alice's ears a sound that made her spring to her feet. It was Robert crying—and Robert never cried for nothing, he never had from babyhood.
"If you're going to be a cry-baby," said the Voice, and then she heard footsteps and the sound of Robert's suppressed weeping growing fainter.
"What," she thought, "is he going to do with him?"
Perhaps he was going to spank him—and Robert was far beyond the spankable age. It was too much. Alice dashed down the stairs. She intended to see it through. To Woman and Civics she had not given a thought. She was sitting up there finding out what men-were-like-when-they-had-the-chance-to-be.
She came down to find Jamie awestruck, round-mouthed, sitting perfectly quiet. Sara, too, was sitting, quiet, on the opposite side of the room. At sight of her mother she jumped up and whispered to her loudly:
"Robert's scared of him! Jamie's scared of him! But I'm not scared of him. He makes me laugh. Not outside—oh, no, not outside," Sara hastened to assure her mother, "but inside I laugh, and I make believe he's a nogre!"
At this speech Alice looked at her daughter with comprehension. Insight into the nature of man came to her. Thus it was that Woman from all time had met the senseless and unimportant roarings of Man—with a smile inside. Sara, whose name, Alice reflected, should have been Eve, was taking her father with that immemorial indulgence that women have shown men since
