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"What?" she said, in an edgy tone "What do you mean, they’re born potty?" She had one hand on Je him, while the other cupped his round little belly, an index finger disappearing into the shadows below to direct his aiesture at his temple in illustration "You know, bar in reply to this, but Je forward

"No, no!" she said, taking a fresh grip "Wake up, honey! Wake up and go potty!"

The insidious terer’swords of the verse he had been trying to recapture

Willie sat upon his pot/The sword to potty gane

He shook his head, as though to dislodge it, but it was too late--the real words had fled Resigned, he gave it up as a bad job and crouched down next to Brianna to help

"Wake up, chuently under Je the silky red tendrils that clung to the child’s temple, still damp with sleep-sweat

Jelower He looked like a small pinkbalefully at an inhospitable upper world

Brianna yaidely, and shook her head, blinking and scowling in the candlelight

"Well, if you don’t like ‘go potty,’ what do you say in Scotland, then?" she deer to Je his wee son if he needed to do a poo," he offered Brianna made a rude noise, but Je the sound

"Right, that’s the idea," Roger said encouragingly His finger twiddled gently in the slight depression, and Je to wake up

"Pooooooo," he said "Poopoo"

"Whatever works," Brianna said, still cross, but resigned "Go potty, go poo--just get it over with, all right? Muo to sleep"

"Perhaps you should take your finger off of hisive the poor lad a co"

"Fine" Bree took her hand aith alacrity, and the stubby object sprang back up, pointing directly at Roger over the riot his hand up as a shield just in ti in drowsy pleasure

"Shit!"

"Chit!" Jely

"Well, that’s not quite--would you stop laughing?" Roger said testily, wiping his hand gingerly on a kitchen rag

Brianna snorted and gurgled, shaking her head so the straggling locks of hair that had escaped her plait fell down around her face

"Good boy, Jeed, Jemmy took on an air of inner absorption, scrunched his chin down into his chest, and without further ado, proceeded to Act Two of the evening’s dralanced at hi her own applause

He was surprised hi the words, just for a moment, his voice hadn’t sounded like his own Very fa the words of Clellan’s song, hearing the old man’s voice, even as his own lips formed the words

"Aye, that’s clever," he said, ently on his silky head

He took the pot outside to empty it while Brianna put Jemmy back to bed with kisses and murmurs of admiration Basic sanitation acco back inside to bed

"Are you through working?" Bree asked drowsily, as he slid into bed beside her She rolled over and thrust her bottoesture of affection, given the fact that she was about thirty degrees warht" He put his arms round her and kissed the back of her ear, the warht She took his chilly hand in hers without coly beneath her chin, with a shtly, then relaxed, letting histhe tinyto each other A faint buzzing snore rose frohteously dry

Brianna had freshly smoored the fire; it burned with a low, even heat and the sweet scent of hickory,small occasional pops as the buried flame reached a pocket of resin or a spot of damp War a blanket of drowsiness up round his ears, unlocking the tidy cupboards of his hts and ihtly colored heaps

Resisting unconsciousness for a last fewthe scattered riches thus revealed, in the faint hope of finding a corner of the Telfer song poking out; some scrap of word or music that would allow hiht of consciousness It wasn’t the story of the ill-fated Willie that eh, but rather a voice Not his own, and not that of old Kimmie Clellan, either

Clever lad! it said, in a clear warer jerked

"Whaju say?" Brianna mumbled, disturbed by thethe words as they formed in his memory "That’s what she said"