“Let’s play Eve’s Other Children,” Noreen ran on. “I’ll be Eve and hide my children, the ones I don’t like specially. You be God, Jan-an.”
This was a great concession on Noreen’s part, for she revelled in the leading rôle, as it gave full play to her dramatic sense of justice.
However, the play began with Noreen hiding some twisted and dry sticks under stones and in holes in trees and then proceeding to dress, in gay autumn leaves, more favoured twigs. She crooned over them; expatiated upon their loveliness, 217 and, at a given signal, poor Jan-an clumsily appeared and in most unflattering terms accused Noreen of depravity and unfaithfulness, demanding finally, in most picturesque and primitive language, the hidden children. At this point Noreen rose to great heights. Fear, remorse, and shame overcame her. She pleaded and denied; she confessed and at last began, with the help of her accuser, to search out the neglected offspring. So wholly did the two enjoy this part of the game that they forgot their animosity, and when the crooked twigs were discovered Jan-an became emphatically allegorical with Noreen and ruthlessly destroyed the “other children” on the score that they weren’t worth keeping.
But the interest flagged at length, and both Jan-an and Noreen became silent and depressed.
“I’ve got feelin’s!” Jan-an remarked, “in the pit of my stomach. Besides, it’s getting cold and a storm’s brewing. Did yer hear thunder?”
Noreen was replacing her favoured children in the crannies of the rocks, but she turned now to Jan-an and said wistfully:
“I want Motherly.”
“She’s biding terrible long up yonder.”
“P’raps, oh! Jan-an, p’raps that lady you were telling about has taken Motherly!”
Noreen became agitated, but Jan-an with blind intuition scoffed.