Nicholas came to the rescue. "Milwaukee's not in China, Mama. It's somewhere in the States."
"Nonsense! It's in China. Walkee-walkee—talkee-talkee! Don't you think I know pigeon English?" She grinned triumphantly, squeezing Alayne's hand.
"Walkee-walkee—talkee-talkee!" chanted Wakefield.
"Nicholas!"
"Yes, Mama."
"Hush the boy. I must not be interrupted."
Nicholas put out a long arm and drew Wake to his side. "Listen," he said, with a finger up; "an improving conversation."
Grandmother said, with her dark bright eyes on the two beside her: "What's the matter? Why haven't you got a child?"
"This is too much," said Augusta.
Her mother retorted: "It's not enough. . . . Pheasant's had one. Meggie's had one. May manage another. . . . I don't like this business of not having children. My mother had eleven. I should have done as well. I started off smartly. But, look you, when we came here the doctor was so hard to get at, Philip was afraid for me. Ah, there was a man, my Philip! The back on him! You don't see such straight backs nowadays. No children. . . . H'm. In my day, a wife would give her husband a round dozen"
"Shaitan!" cried Boney, his biscuit gone and his eye on the stranger.
"—and, if there was one of them he wasn't quite sure about, he took it like a man—ha!"
"Shaitan ka batka!"
"He knew even the most reliable mare . . . skittish now and then."
"Ka batka!"
"Hey, Renny?"
"Yes, old dear. Great days those!"
Eden withdrew his hand from his grandmother's. There was a look of exhaustion on his face. He got to his feet; his lips were parted, his forehead drawn in a
