He is rosy and plump and
curly and cute; and he says such funny things and asks such comical
questions. He likes very much to sit in a special chair in the kitchen;
but that is Susan's favourite chair, too, and when she wants it, out
Jims must go. The last time she put him out of it he turned around and
asked solemnly, 'When you are dead, Susan, can I sit in that chair?'
Susan thought it quite dreadful, and I think that was when she began to
feel anxiety about his possible ancestry. The other night I took Jims
with me for a walk down to the store. It was the first time he had ever
been out so late at night, and when he saw the stars he exclaimed, 'Oh,
Willa, see the big moon and all the little moons!' And last Wednesday
morning, when he woke up, my little alarm clock had stopped because I
had forgotten to wind it up. Jims bounded out of his crib and ran across
to me, his face quite aghast above his little blue flannel pyjamas. 'The
clock is dead,' he gasped, 'oh Willa, the clock is dead.'
"One night he was quite angry with both Susan and me because we would
not give him something he wanted very much. When he said his prayers he
plumped down wrathfully, and when he came to the petition 'Make me a
good boy' he tacked on emphatically, 'and please make Willa and Susan
good, 'cause they're not.'
"I don't go about quoting Jims's speeches to all I meet. That always
bores me when other people do it! I just enshrine them in this old
hotch-potch of a journal!
"This very evening as I put Jims to bed he looked up and asked me
gravely, 'Why can't yesterday come back, Willa?'
"Oh, why can't it, Jims? That beautiful 'yesterday' of dreams and
laughter--when our boys were home--when Walter and I read and rambled
and watched new moons and sunsets together in Rainbow Valley.
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