so very essential to salvation. "How much of life is convention, any way
you arrange it," she thought, "even in such an entirely unconventional
one as ours."

"It _is_ good," said Mark, taking his first mouthful. Evidently he had
not taken the remarks about his face at all seriously.

"See here, Mark," his mother put it to him as man to man, "do you think
you ought to sit down to the table looking like that?"

Mark wriggled, took another mouthful, and got up mournfully.

Paul was touched. "Here, I'll go up with you and get it over quick," he
said. Marise gave him a quick approving glance. That was the best side
of Paul. You could say what you pleased about the faults of American and
French family life, but at any rate the children didn't hate each other,
as English children seemed to, in novels at least. It was only last week
that Paul had fought the big French Canadian boy in his room at school,
because he had made fun of Elly's rubber boots.

As the little boys clattered out she said to the two guests, "I don't
know whether you're used to children. If you're not, you must be feeling
as though you were taking lunch in a boiler factory."

Mr. Welles answered, "I never knew what I was missing before.
Especially Paul. That first evening when you sent him over with the
cake, as he stood in the door, I thought, 'I wish _I_ could have had a
little son like that!'"

"We'll share him with you, Mr. Welles." Marise was touched by the