," said Gissing presently. "Time to get dressed."

It was amazing how fast they were growing. Already they were beginning
to take a pride in trying to dress themselves. While Gissing was in
the bathroom, enjoying his cold tub (and under the stimulus of that
icy sluice forming excellent resolutions for the day) the children were
sitting on the nursery floor eagerly studying the intricacies of their
gear. By the time he returned they would have half their garments on
wrong; waist and trousers front side to rear; right shoes on left feet;
buttons hopelessly mismated to buttonholes; shoelacings oddly zigzagged.
It was far more trouble to permit their ambitious bungling, which must
be undone and painstakingly reassembled, than to have clad them all
himself, swiftly revolving and garmenting them like dolls. But in these
early hours of the day, patience still is robust. It was his pedagogy to
encourage their innocent initiatives, so long as endurance might permit.

Best of all, he enjoyed watching them clean their teeth. It was
delicious to see them, tiptoe on their hind legs at the basin, to which
their noses just reached; mouths gaping wide as they scrubbed with very
small toothbrushes. They were so elated by squeezing out the toothpaste
from the tube that he had not the heart to refuse them this privilege,
though it was wasteful. For they always squeezed out more than
necessary, and after a moment's brushing their mouths became choked and
clotted with the pungent foam. Much of this they swallowed, for he
had not been able to teach them to rinse and gargle. Their only idea
regarding any fluid in the mouth was to swallow it; so they coughed and
strangled and barked. Gissing had a theory that this toothpaste foam
most be an appetizer, for he found that the more of it they swallowed,
the better they ate their breakfast.

After breakfast he hurried them out into the garden, before the day
became too hot. As he put a new lot of prunes to soak in cold water, he
could not help reflecting how different the kitchen and pantry looked
from the time of Fuji. The ice-box pan seemed to be continually brimming
over. Somehow--due, he feared, to a laxity on Mrs. Spaniel's part--ants
had got in. He was always finding them inside the ice-box, and wondered
where they came from. He was amazed to find how negligent he was growing
about pots and pans: he began cooking a new mess of oatmeal in the
double boiler without bothering to scrape out the