BY listening hard to the chants of our children we may find out not only The Other Side, we may find out how the world looks to them, though Alice felt that Sara sometimes mixed up things just for the sake of dramatic effect. And she distinctly didn't approve of a chant with which Sara soothed Jamie when she pretended that he was her very own baby; and Sara chanted it in a churchly sort of way, too:
In comes the Holy, Holy Ghost,
A-walking on his hind legs."
Alice was sure that she had never had the Holy Ghost thus represented to Sara, and yet Alice had to pretend not to hear for fear of frightening Sara and making her as mysterious as Robert. But it was hard work to keep quiet because, unlike most children, Sara was born irreligious and scoffing and Alice felt that she sang things like this purposely. It was also through the medium of chants that Alice learned first about Evelyn Dearie.
All mothers who know about them at all are more interested in the companions who come from The Other Side to play with their children than in anything else. Sometimes you'll be sewing and the room all of a sudden gets still and then your baby begins a whispered conversation, until it seems that from one mo-
