“Well, so are you!” retorted Dick, resenting the statement as if it were an implication of guilt.
“If you can’t get milk, water must do,” answered Tom, taking the loaf from his brother’s hand and carefully breaking off a portion of it, to moisten it under the spigot.
The others watched him with keen interest, and Harry inquired:
“Do you s’pose I could have just a little bit, Tom?”
“No, I don’t s’pose anything like it. You aren’t a baby, are you? Only babies eat when ’tisn’t dinner time, now.”
“Once I used to eat when ’twasn’t dinner. Once I did,” answered the little boy, with something like a quiver of the lip.
“Does our father or our mother eat ’tween meals, Harry Smith?” demanded Tom, indignantly.
“No. Come on. If we can’t have bread let’s play hop-toad.”
“All right. After I’ve set Penelope up against the wall so’s we shan’t knock her over,” answered the brother.
The little maid was soon propped securely across an angle of the whitewashed wall, with a chair before her to keep her from creeping forward into danger, and the small triplets were soon leaping over one another’s backs, around and around the room. Fortunately, there was little furniture to obstruct their movements and therefore little danger of hurting themselves; and though the exercise tended to increase their always-present hunger, that was nothing new.