THIS discussion had been punctuated by the cheerful noises of laughing children. Now Sara's voice rose up shrill, while Robert kept up a never-ending chuckle; they were having that rough and tumble play known as "fooling." All the time that Alice was arguing, her subconscious went on unceasingly,
"You'd better stop them. You'd better stop them. This is no time for them to yowl." It was only because there was something Spartan in the depths of Alice's spirit that she didn't.
"Let her see them at their worst," she thought defiantly. "It's good for Sara to be toughened." So she waited, as one might await an unimportant yet nerve-racking crack of doom, for the inevitable howl from her daughter, the howl that almost always happens when little boys and girls play together.
Jamie was playing by himself. He played outside the circle of his older brother's and sister's interest, as oblivious of them as of his elders. He ran from a rose bush to a given spot, stamped his foot, ran in a circle around the spot and ran back to the rose bush. It seemed like a mysterious fairy play, as strange and unfathomable as his gestures were lovely.
Yet the sight of him failed to please his mother. Indeed, she hastily turned her eyes away when Mrs. Marcey remarked, "How sweetly he plays alone," for Alice knew only too well that Jamie was engaged in no mystical imaginings, no delicate play of childhood, but that he was glutting his innocent lust of slaughter.
