ave.

Our friend said he didn't care a straw about their hearts. It was their
legs and arms and lungs that were driving him crazy.

He also said that he would go out with us and get away from it for a
bit, or he should go mad.

He proposed a theater, and we accordingly made our way toward the
Strand. Our friend, in closing the door behind him, said he could not
tell us what a relief it was to get away from those children. He said he
loved children very much indeed, but that it was a mistake to have too
much of anything, however much you liked it, and that he had come to the
conclusion that twenty-two hours a day of them was enough for any one.

He said he did not want to see another child or hear another child until
he got home. He wanted to forget that there were such things as children
in the world.

We got up to the Strand and dropped into the first theater we came to.
The curtain went up, and on the stage was a small child standing in its
nightshirt and screaming for its mother.

Our friend looked, said one word and bolted, and we followed.

We went a little further and dropped into another theater.

Here there were two children on the stage. Some grown-up people were
standing round them listening, in respectful attitudes, while the
children talked. They appeared to be lecturing about something.

Again we fled, swearing, and made our way to a third theater. They
were all children there. It was somebody or other's Children's Company
performing an opera, or pantomime, or something of that sort.

Our friend said he would not venture into another theater. He said he
had heard there were places called music-halls, and he begged us to take
him to one of these and not to tell his wife.

We inquired of a policeman and found that there really were such places,
and we took him into one.

The first thing we saw were two little boys doing tricks on a horizontal
bar.

Our friend was about to repeat his customary programme of flying and
cursing, but we restrained him. We assured him that he would really see
a grown-up person if he waited a bit, so he sat out the boys and also
their little sister on a bicycle and waited for the next item.

It turned out to be an infant phenomenon who sang and danced in fourteen
different costumes, and we once more fled.

Our friend said he could not go home in the state he was then; he felt
sure he should kill the twins if he did. He pondered for awhile, and
then he thought he wo