“Well, I s’pose you do. Though my grandmother’s c’rected me lots o’ times ’bout them very same words. I—Only I forget. My forgettery is always easier ’n my memory. Isn’t yours? An’ anyhow I don’t know anything, ’cept ’bout horses. But I know more ’bout them ’an I could tell you ‘in a month o’ Sundays.’”
“How long is a ‘month o’ Sundays?’ When does it come? Before Christmas?”
“I don’t know. Mary Jane knows. She talks ’bout it. An’ it comes—why it must come any time! ’Cause when Mr. Resolved goes to market she tells him not to be a ‘month o’ Sundays,’ or she can’t get the dinner cooked in time. And—lots—Here’s your papa! Oh, I tell you I love him! He’s so dear.”
“You needn’t! He isn’t yours. You can’t have him,” cried Beatrice, feeling her young heart swell with jealousy.
“But I can love him, can’t I? If you couldn’t love my father you would be funny. And, oh, isn’t it happy to be so glad! Most always, anyhow, I think this is an awful nice world. Folks are so cosey an’ kind.”
“An’ I don’t think it’s nice one bit. You’ll get the candy; I know you will. You got here first!”
“Well—if I did? Wouldn’t I give you half,—the evenest half we could measure? S’pose I’d want it if you didn’t have it too? Say, s’pose they’ll be dinner enough?”
“What do you mean? Course they will.”
“Then I’m glad. But you see they didn’t know I was coming; an’ Mary Jane says I’m the ‘beatenest eater for a little girl she ever saw;’ an’ sometimes when comp’ny comes to my grandmother’s she scolds, Mary Jane does. ’Cause she says: ‘I have enough cooked for my own folks, but not enough for my neighbors,’ an’ it makes her angry. An’ my grandmother says, solemn-like: ‘Ma-ry-Ja-ne!’ an’ then Mary Jane goes in the kitchen an’ bangs things around; an’ Mr. Tubbs laughs, an’ she gets madder, an’—I shouldn’t like to make your cook feel that way.”
“Don’t you be afraid! You can have all you want to eat; an’ if they isn’t enough you can have mine, too. I ain’t ever hungry.”