"My terrapin shan't eat flies," protested Bella, the second little girl.
"It ain't your terrapin!"
"It is."
"It ain't her terrapin, is it, papa?"
Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the lid of the shovel with the poker, and suggested that the terrapin might try a little popcorn for a change. As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed face in the red firelight, he made a picture of beautiful and serene domesticity.
"I shouldn't wonder if he'd get quite a taste for popcorn if you could once persuade him to try it," he remarked, his mind having wandered whimsically from his wife to the terrapin.
Emily had given the children batter-bread and buttermilk, and she sat now regarding her brother's profile as it was limned boldly in shadow against the quivering flames. It was impossible; she discovered, to survey Beverly's character with softness or his profile with severity.
"Don't you think," she ventured presently, after a wholesome effort to achieve diplomacy, "that you might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows in the garden. Adam can't find anybody, and if the corn isn't dropped this week we'll probably get none until late in the summer."
"'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,'" quoted Beverly, as he drank his coffee. "It would lay me up for a week, Emily, I am surprised that you ask it."
She was surprised herself, the moment after she had put the question, so hopeless appeared any attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian purposes.