mad bull's shrieks of protest and repudiation would startle every
bit of chivalry for miles and miles around.

Several experiences of this nature taught Mary, that, in dealing with
infants of changeable and rudimentary mind, honesty was an impossible
policy and candor a very boomerang, which returned and smote one with
savage force. So she stooped to guile and detested the flannel all the
more deeply because of the state to which it was debasing an upright
conscience and a high sense of honor.

At first her lapses from the right were all negative. She neglected the
gift of God. She would abandon it, always in a safe and shady spot and
always with its covers smoothly tucked in, its wabbly parasol adjusted
at the proper angle, and always with a large piece of wood tied to the
perambulator's handle by a labyrinth of elastic strings. These Mary had
drawn from abandoned garters, sling shots, and other mysterious sources,
and they allowed the wood to jerk unsteadily up and down, and to soothe
the unsuspecting Theodora with a spasmodic rhythm very like the
ministrations of her preoccupied nurse.

Meanwhile the nurse would be far afield upon her own concerns, and
Theodora was never one of them. The river, the lane, the tall hickory
knew her again and again. Camelot shone out across the miles of hill and
tree and valley. But the river was silent and the lane empty, and
Camelot seemed very far as autumn cleared the air. Perhaps this was
because knights and ladies manifest themselves only to the pure of
heart. Perhaps because Mary was always either consciously or
subconsciously listening for the recalling shrieks of the abandoned and
disprized gift of God.

"Stop it, I tell you," she admonished her purple-faced and convulsive
charge one afternoon when all the world was gold. "Stop it, or mamma
will be coming after us, and making us stay on the back porch." But
Theodora, in the boastfulness of her new lungs, yelled uninterruptedly
on. Then did Mary try cajolery. She removed her sister from the
perambulator and staggered back in a sitting posture with suddenness and
force. The jar gave Theodora pause, and Mary crammed the silence full of
promise. "If you'll stop yellin' now I'll see that my prince husband
lets you be a goose-girl on the hills behind our palace. Its awful nice
being a goose-girl," she hastened to add lest the prospect fail to
charm. "If I didn't have to marry that prince an' be a queen I guess I'd
been a goose-g