"What's that yellar stuff, with leaves growing out of it?" Mabel inquired.
"That's potato salud. Ain't you never seen potato salud before? Where you been all your life?"
"To home," Mabel answered, literally.
Madget, elevated on a wooden box with Peggy's coat thrown over it, sat speechless between her brother and Elizabeth. The hall began to fill rapidly. A young girl mounted the platform and started a few uncertain notes on the wheezy organ.
"That's going to be the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' Peggy groaned. "We've got to get these children up again." But one of the bustling waitresses hurried to the side of the young organist, and arrested her in mid-career.
"Don't play that," she was heard protesting. "We want to feed this lot, and get them out in time to set the tables twice. We haven't got time for them to stand up through the anthem."
The young musician switched obediently to "I am always blowing bubbles—blowing bubbles in the air," which Moses sang with her nonchalantly.
Plates of cold ham and corned beef began to circulate up and down the table. The portly waitresses, family matrons in white duck and muslin, enveloped in huge white aprons with long strings tied imposingly behind, began to pass the beans, and to distribute thick mugs of golden-brown coffee.
Madget still gazed ahead, with unseeing eyes and quivering lips.
"You eat your supper," Moses said, not unkindly, "or brother'll land you one when he gets you home. Ain't you thankful for all that Miss Laury Ann and Elizabeth and Peggy Farraday has done for you? See me eat."