FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 203 



These two weeks past we have had the Infant with 

 us at night, clad in a light woollen monkey-suit nighty 

 with feet, her crib being, however, under cover. Her 

 open-eyed wonder has been a new phase of the vaca- 

 tion. Knowing no fear, she has begun to develop a feel- 

 ing of kinship with all the small animals, not only of 

 the barn but dwellers on Opal Farm as well, and when 

 she discovered a nest of small mice in an old tool- box 

 under the eaves and proposed to take them, in their 

 improvised house, to her very own room at the opposite 

 end, this " room " being a square marked around her bed 

 by small flower-pots, set upside down, I protested, as a 

 matter of course, saying that mice were not things to 

 handle, and besides they would die without their mother. 



The Infant, still clutching the box, looked at me in 

 round-eyed wonder: "I had Dinah and the kittens 

 to play with in the nursery, didn't I, mother?" 



"Certainly!" 



"And when Ann-stasia brought them up in her ap'n, 

 Dinah walked behind, didn't she?" 



"Yes, I think so!" 



" Ver-r-y well, the mouse mother will walk behind too, 

 and I love mice better'n cats, for they have nicer hands ; 

 'sides, mother, don't you know who mice really and 

 truly are, and why they have to hide away? They 



