The Brimming Cup

Paul did not laugh. He said in horrified reproach, "Oh, Mark! You never

touched your face! It's piggy dirty."

Mark was staggered for a moment, but nothing staggered him long. "I

don't get microbes off my face into my food," he said calmly. "And you

bet there aren't any microbes left on my hands." He went on, looking at

the table disapprovingly, "Mother, there isn't a many on the table

this day, and I wanted a many."

"The stew's awful good," said Paul, putting away a large quantity.

"'Very,' not 'awful,' and don't hold your fork like that," corrected

Marise, half-heartedly, thinking that she herself did not like the

insipid phrase "very good" nor did she consider the way a fork was held

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

wistfulness of his tone. She noticed that Mr. Marsh had made no comment

on the children. He was perhaps one of the people who never looked at

them, unless they ran into him. Eugenia Mills was like that, quite

sincerely.