"Is it good, Uncle Joel?"
"Uhuh! Pretty fair." Joel felt for his handkerchief and wiped the moist corner of his mouth.
"I'm going to taste it." Celia tilted the spoon to her own lips and sipped with appreciation. "Uncle Joel," she said thoughtfully, "if you're afraid this'll spoil your appetite for supper, I'll eat it."
Again Joel chuckled. This made the third time in swift succession, and practise was giving him surprising facility. But unwarned by past experience, Mary put in her word. "Poor Mr. Dale hasn't eaten scarcely a mouthful to-day, and here you've had bread and jelly since dinner."
Joel's unaccustomed smile was at once obscured. "Mary, a considerable spell back a wise man said, 'Every fool will be meddling.' If you aren't familiar with the author, Mary, it would pay you to read him." Again he gave his attention to Celia. "We'll share this, turn and turn about," he compromised. "First you have a spoonful and then me."
Mary withdrew unheeded. Though tremendously in awe of the impecunious and futile Joel, Mary felt no sense of diffidence where the efficient Persis was concerned, and at once went to find her. But Persis, who sat in one of her new bay-windows, the baby on her knee, was entertaining Mrs. West, while her benignantly maternal eyes watched three children playing outside.
"I declare you could have knocked me down with a feather, Persis, when I heard it," Mrs. West declared, her portliness rendering the figure of speech extremely impressive. "I wouldn't have thought queer of one or even two, but a whole family."
"A family's what I've always wanted," Persis returned with the cheerfulness of a woman whose life-long dream has come true. "And if I could have found enough of the sort I was after, I'm not sure I'd have stopped short of a round dozen."
"It's a responsibility," sighed Mrs. West "They're kind of like playthings to you now. You'll feel it later."
Persis looked at her with kind eyes. "I haven't added any new responsibility in taking these children, Mis' West. It was there just as soon as the money and leisure came to me, and I've made a start toward meeting it, that's all. We don't make our responsibilities; we just wake up to 'em."