“’Cause she’s got her feller.”
“Who? That pimply-faced Eckles boy?”
The child nodded and then irrelevantly added:
“Nettie’s got appendicitis.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Jeannette. “Where did she get that?”
Further information was not forthcoming. The woman’s mind flew to the possible complications such a calamity would precipitate as she opened her bag and felt among its contents for the nickel package of lemon drops she had purchased at the Pennsylvania Station while waiting for her train. She shook three of the candies out into Baby Roy’s dirt-streaked palm, and was admonishing the recipient that they were to be eaten one by one, when there was a clatter of hard shoes on the porch and a boy of thirteen catapulted out of the house.
“Dibs on the funny paper!” he yelled.
Jeannette eyed him with assumed disapproval.
“There’s no necessity for such a racket, Frank; it’s Sunday, remember, and your sister’s sick and everything.”
She proceeded at once, however, to unfold her newspaper and to hand him the comic section.