nded, and demanded with careless assurance, that
accepted her goodness as unquestioningly as she accepted the fertility
of the earth, and used her knowing blindly and flatteringly how
inexhaustively rich her depths were.... She could have wept for this:
it was priceless beyond kingdoms: the smile on a boy's face lifted her
to an exaltation. Her girl was inexpressibly sweet, surely an island
in her wide heart, but a little boy ... her breasts could have filled
with milk for him, him she could have nourished in the rocks and in
desert places: he would have been life to her and adventure, a barrier
against old age, an incantation against sorrow, a fragrance and a
grief and a defiance....

It was quite plain that Mrs. Cafferty was satisfied with this addition
to her household, but the profit which she had expected to accrue from
his presence was not the liberal one she had in mind when making the
preliminary arrangements. For it appeared that the young man had an
appetite of which Mrs. Cafferty spoke with the respect proper to
something colossal and awesome. A half-loaf did not more than break
the back of a hunger which could wriggle disastrously over another
half-loaf: so that, instead of being relieved by his advent, she was
confronted by a more immediate and desolating bankruptcy than that
from which she had attempted to escape. Exactly how to deal with this
situation she did not know, and it was really in order to discuss her
peculiar case that she had visited Mrs. Makebelieve. She could, of
course, have approached the young man and demanded from him an
increase of money that would still be equitable to both parties, but
she confessed a repugnance to this course. She did not like to
upbraid or trouble any one on account of an appetite which was so
noteworthy. She disliked, in any event, to raise a question about
food: her instinct for hospitality was outraged at the thought, and as
she was herself the victim, or the owner, of an appetite which had
often placed a strain on her revenues, a fellow-feeling operated still
further in mitigation of his disqualification.

Mrs. Makebelieve's advice was that she should stifle the first fierce
and indiscriminate cravings of the young man's hunger by a liberal
allowance of stirabout, which was a cheap, wholesome and very
satisfying food, and in that way his destruction of more costly
victuals would be kept within reasonable limits. Appetite, she held,
was largely a matter of yout