“Patience! I should think it did!” said Bess, laughing and repeating, “Oh, Sam, cut my pen!” in a very comical manner. “If that didn’t take the patience of Job! And what did it mean, after all? I’m sure Webster don’t know! I think they ought to be fair, at least!”
“So do I,” said Mary, laughing at Bessie’s earnestness. “Now try the word homestead, Bess, and see what you can make of that.”
“Why, is it one?”
“I’m not quite sure; I was running it over in my mind to-day; but I had no slate to prove my canceling correct.”
“What did you think it made?”
“Do-eat-hams.”
“Oh, so it will,” said Bess, hastily putting down the letters; “and you know they do eat hams at homesteads!” Then Bess began drawing the tip of her forefinger slowly through each letter, repeating slowly, “do e-a-t-h- —There, now, that’s worse than Artaxerxes! If that e was only an a!”
Mary looked on the slate a moment, and then said, pleasantly, “But you see it isn’t!”
“How easy you do take things, Mary! Now, that would be so good, and it comes so near!”
“That’s the best way to take things, isn’t it, Bess?” said Mary, gently lifting Bessie’s face by the little fat chin, and looking into her large blue eyes lovingly. “Anagrams, you see, may teach us a lesson.”