"It was no such thing! It was a yellow-covered novel!" I don't know why they persisted in putting novels in pronounced yellow covers to betray people, unless it was that publishers wouldn't use false pretences. And to put a story in the fatal color made it as reprehensible to most people as a yellow aster. "And such a table!" Mrs. Underhill caught her breath. "Everything at sixes and sevens, and the cloth looking as if it had been used a month, and Mrs. Whitney as unconcerned as if the children had only gone down to the corner. I declare I couldn't be so—so——"
"But they're a jolly lot. They save a great deal of strength in not worrying. And they know Dele is trusty. She's a smart girl, too."
"Well, I wouldn't want any of my sons to marry girls brought up as those Whitneys."
"Hear that, Jim. You are fairly warned."
Jim turned scarlet.
"Jim will have to be in better business many a year than thinking of girls," subjoined his mother decisively.
The little girl didn't seem very hungry. She ate her bread-and-milk and talked over the delights of the afternoon, and her enjoyment mollified her mother a good deal. Jim considered at first whether it wouldn't rather even up things if he went without his supper, but the biscuits and the boiled beef were so tempting, and in those days boys could eat the twenty-four hours round. People were wont to say they had the digestion of an ostrich. But I think if you had tried them on nails and old shoes the ostrich would have gone up head.
"Oh, do you see how late it is? I know Hanny will be sick to-morrow! And Jim, you'll have the doctor's bill to pay."
"Oh, no," said Hanny with a smile, "Joe has promised to doctor me for nothing."
Mrs. Underhill lost her point. Jim wanted a good laugh, but he thought it would hardly be prudent.