Part One - What Goes On Inside

Then she laughed inwardly at the thought of certain sophisticated
friends and their opinion of her life. "I daresay we do seem to be
bringing them up like Huckleberry Finns, in the minds of any of the New
York friends, Eugenia Mills for instance!" She remembered with a passing
gust of amusement the expression of slightly scared distaste which
Eugenia had for the children. "Too crudely quivering lumps of
life-matter for Eugenia's taste," she thought, and then, "I wonder what
Marsh's feeling towards children really is, children in general. He
seems to have the greatest capacity to ignore their existence at all. Or
does he only seem to do that, because I have grown so morbidly conscious
of their existence as the only thing vital in life? That's what he
thinks, evidently. Well, I'd like to have him live a mother's life and
see how he'd escape it!"

"Mother," said Paul seriously, "Mother, Mark isn't even awake yet, and
he'll never be ready for school."

"Oh, his teacher had to go to a wedding today. Don't you remember? He
doesn't have any school till the afternoon session."

She thought to herself, "What a sense of responsibility Paul has! He is
going to be one of the pillars of the earth, one of those miraculous
human beings who are mixed in just the right proportions, so that they
aren't pulled two ways at once. Two ways! Most of us are pulled a
thousand ways! It is one of the injustices of the earth that such people
aren't loved as much as impulsive, selfish, brilliant natures like dear
little Mark's. Paul has had such a restful personality! Even when he
was a baby, he was so straight-backed and robust. There's no yellow
streak in Paul, such as too much imagination lets in. I know all about
that yellow streak, alas!"