Jamie was picking rose bugs from the rose bush, placing them on the stone and stamping them, one by one. Sara had taught him to do this, and since then this loathsome sport had been his favorite diversion. Alice dreaded the moment when his grandmother would gather her flowing draperies around her and say, "I must see what the little darling is doing."
Early childhood knows no good or bad, nor does it know clean or dirty. Or if it knows, it prefers dirty. Sweet pink and white childhood loves squashing rose bugs, cleaning fish and paddling in mud; it delights in all things squashy and sticky. There is nothing it resents more than enforced cleanliness, and Jamie was at an age to resent this with full-lunged bellows.
So between the three of them Alice was far from comfortable. That is the way with mothers, as long as they are within earshot of their children their subconsciousness peers ahead into the unknown, predicts disaster and foresees danger, keeping up such a clamor that the nerves grow brittle. Now with the arrival of Tom and some visitors, Alice forgot these subconscious warnings.
Jamie still ran in circles around the massacre of the rose bugs, and Sara and Robert were "fooling" like puppies. Robert's voice arose mocking:
"Don't you wish you knew the name of Uncle Zotzby's dog?
"Ah, tell me, tell me," came from Sara.
"Oh, don't you wish you knew?"
"Really," said the elder Mrs. Marcey, "that Zotsby matter goes too far, frequently."
Indeed, Robert had an expression with which he would walk through a room, his mouth shut tightly, a provocative look in his eyes which meant "I have a secret." Now he openly taunted Sara. The wail of woe had not
