"Bring it on!" cried her father jovially. "I can do it justice."
Janice wondered if he could. Already the food, she knew, was drying up in the warming oven. She hurried out into the kitchen. Delia had not come in from the backyard. Janice shrank from interfering with that back-fence conference; but she could not see daddy's dinner spoiled.
"Come, Delia!" she called, opening the door. "My father has come home."
"Oh, my! Is your paw arrived?" asked the giantess; coming lingeringly away from the fence.
Janice saw Miss Peckham's snappy little eyes viewing her at the kitchen door with no pleasant expression. She felt that something was brewing—something that would not be pleasant. But the spinster retired without speaking to her.
"You have dinner ready very early, Delia," Janice said, as the big woman lumbered into the kitchen.
"Didn't you just say your paw had come?" demanded Delia in her squeaky voice.
"Yes. But you have everything ready at five o'clock instead of at six."
"Oh, yes. I don't never believe in keepin' folks waitin' for their victuals," said Delia, tossing her head. "You ain't got any call to be critical—no you ain't."
It was of no use! Janice saw that as plainly as she saw anything. This giantess has a dwarf's brain. As daddy said, when he became particularly "Yankeefied," "she didn't know beans!" It would be quite useless to talk to her, or to expect her to remember what she was told to do.