welts. Gissing, wise by now, knew that after a forager the
mosquito always retires to the ceiling, so he kept a stepladder
in the room. Mounted on this, he would pursue the enemy with a
towel, while the children screamed with merriment. Then stomachs
must be anointed with more citronella; sheets and blankets
reassembled, and quiet gradually restored. Life, as parents know,
can be supported on very little sleep.

But how delicious to lie there, in the morning freshness, to hear
the earth stir with reviving gusto, the merriment of birds, the
exuberant clink of milk-bottles set down by the back-door, the
whole complex machinery of life begin anew! Gissing was amazed
now, looking back upon his previous existence, to see himself so
busy, so active. Few people are really lazy, he thought: what we
call laziness is merely maladjustment. For in any department of
life where one is genuinely interested, he will be zealous beyond
belief. Certainly he had not dreamed, until he became (in a
manner of speaking) a parent, that he had in him such capacity
for detail.

This business of raising a family, though-- had he any true
aptitude for it? or was he forcing himself to go through with it?
Wasn't he, moreover, incurring all the labours of parenthood
without any of its proper dignity and social esteem? Mrs. Chow
down the street, for instance, why did she look so sniffingly
upon him when she heard the children, in the harmless uproar of
their play, cry him aloud as Daddy? Uncle, he had intended they
should call him; but that is, for beginning speech, a hard
saying, embracing both a palatal and a liquid. Whereas Da-da--the
syllables come almost unconsciously to the infant mouth. So he