eat many times in
emphasis. "Zose pipple," she added, "zose lucky pipple who have all zere
old pipple wiz zem, they can _not_ know how hard is eet to be a mozzer,
wizout a one grand'mere, or oncle."

So J.M. at the end of his first fortnight in Woodville found himself
undisputed umpire in all the games, discussions, quarrels,
and undertakings of seven young, Irish-Americans and more
French-Canadian-Americans than he could count. He never did find out
exactly how many Loyettes there were. The untidy front yard, littered with
boxes and barrels, assumed a strangely different aspect to him as he
learned its infinite possibilities, for games and buildings and
imaginations generally. Sometimes it was a village with a box as house for
each child, ranged in streets and lanes, and then Uncle Jerry was the
mayor and had to make the laws. Sometimes the yard foamed and heaved in
salt waves as, embarked in caravels, the expedition for the discovery of
America (out of the older children's history-books) dashed over the
Atlantic. It is needless to state that Uncle Jerry was Christopher
Columbus.

Both the grateful mothers whom he was relieving cried out that never had
there been such peace as since he came, not only because the children
could appeal to him for decisions instead of running to their mothers, but
because, the spectacular character in every game belonging to him as
"company," there were no more quarrels between Mike and Pierre about the
leadership. J.M. could not seem to find his old formal personality for
weeks after Mike's baseball had knocked it out of him, and in the meantime
he submitted, meekly at first and later with an absurd readiness, to being
an Indian chieftain, and the head of the fire department, and the
principal of a big public school, and the colonel of a regiment, and the
owner of a cotton factory, and the leader of Arctic expeditions, and all
the other characters which the fertile minds inhabiting the front yard
forced upon him. He realized that he was a changed soul when he found
himself rejoicing as the boys came tugging yet another big crate, obtained
from the factory, to add to the collection before him. They needed it for
the car for the elephant as the circus they were then performing moved
from one end of the yard to the other.

He was often very, very tired when night came, but he surprised himself by
never having a touch of his old enemy, insomnia. At first he went to bed
when the children d