yes and arms and legs. It also induces in some a perpetual good-humored
irritability wherein one can slap and cuddle a child in the same
instant, or shout threateningly or lovingly, call warningly and murmur
encouragingly in an astonishing sequence. The woman with six children
must both physically and mentally travel at a tangent, and when a
husband has to be badgered or humored into the bargain, then the life
of such a woman is more complex than is readily understood.

When Mary came home Mrs. Cafferty was sitting on her mother's bed, two
small children and a cat were also on the bed, two slightly bigger
children were under the bed, and two others were galloping furiously
up and down the room. At one moment these latter twain were runaway
horses, at another they were express trains. When they were horses
they snorted and neighed and kicked, when they were trains they backed
and shunted, blew whistles and blew off steam. The children under the
bed were tigers in a jungle, and they made the noises proper to such
beasts and such a place; they bit each other furiously, and howled and
growled precisely as tigers do. The pair of infants on the bed were
playing the game of bump; they would stand upright, then spring high
into the air and come crashing down on the bed, which then sprung them
partly up again. Each time they jumped they screamed loudly, each time
they fell they roared delighted congratulations to each other, and
when they fell together they fought with strong good humor. Sometimes
they fell on Mrs. Makebelieve; always they bumped her. At the side of
the bed their mother sat telling with a gigantic voice a story wherein
her husband's sister figured as the despicable person she was to the
eye of discernment, and this story was punctuated and shot through and
dislocuted by objurgations, threats, pleadings, admirations, alarms
and despairs addressed to the children separately and en masse, by
name, nickname, and hastily created epithet.

Mary halted in amazement in the doorway. She could not grasp all the
pandemonium at once, and while she stood Mrs. Cafferty saw her.

"Come on in, honey," said she. "Your ma's as right as a trivet. All
she wanted was a bit of good company and some children to play with.
Deed," she continued, "children are the best medicine for a woman that
I know of. They don't give you time to be sick, the creatures! Patrick
John, I'll give you a smack on the side of the head if you don't let
you