“Then whose are they?” I demanded.
“They’re yours,” retorted Dinky-Dunk, and I found his hair-splitting, at such a time, singularly exasperating.
“I rather imagine they belonged to the family, if you intend it to remain a family.”
He winced at that, as I had proposed that he should.
“It seems to be getting a dangerously divided one,” he flung back, with a quick and hostile glance in my direction.
I was ready to fly to pieces, like a barrel that’s lost its hoops. But a thin and quavery and over-disturbing sound from the swing-box out on the sleeping-porch brought me up short. It was a pizzicato note which I promptly recognized as the gentle Pee-Wee’s advertisement of wakefulness. So I beat a quick and involuntary retreat, knowing only too well what I’d have ahead of me if Poppsy joined in to make that solo a duet.
But Pee-Wee refused to be silenced, and what Dinky-Dunk had just said felt more and more like a branding-iron against my breast. So I carried my wailing infant back to the dinner-table where my husband still stood beside his empty chair. The hostile eye with which he regarded the belcantoing Pee-Wee reminded me of the time he’d spoken of his own off-spring as “squalling brats.” And the memory wasn’t a tranquillizing one. It was still another spur roweling me back to the ring of combat.
“Then you’ve decided to take that position?” I demanded as I surveyed the cooling roast-beef and the fallen Yorkshire pudding.
“As soon as they can fix up my sleeping-quarters in the bunk-house over at Casa Grande,” was Dinky-Dunk’s reply. He tried to say it casually, but didn’t quite succeed, for I could see his color deepen a little. And this, in turn, led to a second only too obvious gesture of self-defense.
“My monthly check, of course, will be delivered to you,” he announced, with an averted eye.