Morning Children.

Children! children!

Oh no. Not yet. Oh, it can't be time. Go away. I wont. Oh, why must I?

Children! Children!

They are being called by the cold servant girls.

But they simply can't get up. They simply must have one more little sleep—the best sleep of all—the warm, soft, darling little rabbit of a sleep…. Just let me hug it one minute more before it bounds away.

Soft little girls rolled up in rounds, just their bunch of curls showing over the sheet top; little long pale boys stretching out their slender feet; other little boys lying on their bellies pressing their heads into the pillow; tiny little fellows with fresh cut hair sprouting from a tuft; little girls on their backs, their fists clenched, the bed-clothes anyhow, one foot dangling; girls with pig tails or rings of white paper snails instead of hair…. And now there is the sound of plunging water and all those youthful, warm bodies, the tender exposed boy children, and the firm compact little girls, lie down in the bath tubs and ruffle their shoulders scattering the bright drops as birds love to do with their wings….

Squeech! Squeech! Tchee! Quee! Little boys with plastered hair, clean collars and brand page 167 new boots squeak from the nursery to the lobby to the cupboard under the stairs where the school kits are hung. Furious young voices cry: “Who's stolen my ink eraser that was in the well of my pencil box?”

They hiss through their teeth at the stolid servant girls carrying the porridge pots: “You've been at this! Thief! Spy!!”