d not smile but only twitch up his lips. She waved to him as long
as she could, and when he was lost she wanted to leap from the vestibule
and run back to him. She thought of a hundred tendernesses she had
neglected.

She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest
of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether
excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb.

She sighed, "I couldn't do this if it weren't for Will's kindness, his
giving me money." But a second after: "I wonder how many women would
always stay home if they had the money?"

Hugh complained, "Notice me, mummy!" He was beside her on the red plush
seat of the day-coach; a boy of three and a half. "I'm tired of playing
train. Let's play something else. Let's go see Auntie Bogart."

"Oh, NO! Do you really like Mrs. Bogart?"

"Yes. She gives me cookies and she tells me about the Dear Lord. You
never tell me about the Dear Lord. Why don't you tell me about the
Dear Lord? Auntie Bogart says I'm going to be a preacher. Can I be a
preacher? Can I preach about the Dear Lord?"

"Oh, please wait till my generation has stopped rebelling before yours
starts in!"

"What's a generation?"

"It's a ray in the illumination of the spirit."

"That's foolish." He was a serious and literal person, and rather
humorless. She kissed his frown, and marveled:

"I am running away from my husband, after liking a Swedish ne'er-do-well
and expressing immoral opinions, just as in a romantic story. And my own
son reproves me because I haven't given him religious instruction. But
the story doesn't go right. I'm neither groaning nor being dramatically
saved. I keep on running away, and I enjoy it. I'm mad with joy over it.
Gopher Prairie is lost back there in the dust and stubble, and I look
forward----"

She continued it to Hugh: "Darling, do you know what mother and you are
going to find beyond the blue horizon rim?"

"What?" flatly.

"We're going to find elephants with golden howdahs from which peep young
maharanees with necklaces of rubies, and a dawn sea colored like the
breast of a dove, and a white and green house filled with books and
silver tea-sets."

"And cookies?"

"Cookies? Oh, most decidedly cookies. We've had enough of bread and
porridge. We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on
no cookies at all."

"That's foolish."

"It is, O male Kennicott!"

"Huh!" said Kennicott II, and