"I am going to eat."
"Where do you suppose Moses is? It's time he was dressing."
"No, he went downstairs with Grandma. There he comes now, I think."
Trailing up the front stairs into the guest chamber, which was the centre of activities, Moses appeared, swaddled in the folds of a red damask tablecloth, holding his clothes in his hand. His hair was dripping, but from the rest of his person there emanated an atmosphere, even an odour, of shining cleanliness.
"Want to know how I washed?" he inquired, proudly. "I went out by the back door, and I took off all my clothes, and then I rubbed myself all over with yaller soap, and then I turned the hose on till I come nice and clean. I don't like to take no baths in the house. You can't get the water to squizzling."
"Well, I guess it squizzled, all right," Peggy said. "Now get yourself into these clothes quickly."
It was two thoroughly exhausted girls that finally marshalled their charges into the Town Hall, where the bean supper was to take place, but they felt that their efforts to improve the Steppe children were justified by the result. Moses in a brown shirt, bloomers and stockings to match them, with his not unshapely feet encased in black sneakers, and a red Windsor tie—he had demanded red—headed the little procession. Then Mabel, proudly pinned into her white apron, with a yellow sash about her middle, and the lace frills of her improvised sleeves draped elegantly about her elbows, and lastly the resplendent Madget—a complete product in pink chambray and ribbons to match.
"Their colours all swear at each other," Elizabeth said, "I never thought of that, did you, Peggy? We'll put Moses between. His tie doesn't go with pink or yellow, but there isn't very much of it, thank goodness!"
"Where are the beans?" Mabel asked, practically, as they seated her at one end of a long, deal table decorated with bunches of small American flags—the occasion was patriotic—clustered in cups and glasses, like stiff-stemmed flowers, and vases of dahlias and asters and rambler roses flanking them.
"Don't show your ign'rance," Moses said, witheringly. "It's a bean supper. You don't have no more beans than you do supper. See the chocolate cake, Madget, and the custid pie, and the potato salud?"