When Bill and Bet came to him this way he knew what to do with them. He picked them up, an arm about each one, and carried them about adventuring until their mama expostulated. And, surreptitiously now and then when no one was looking, he kissed their red, little, moist mouths.
“Please,” said Paula. “I shall not call you bad any more. I shall say you are good and love you. Please.”
“Hang it!” muttered John Sheldon.
“Please!” said Paula.
“You see—”
“Please!” said Paula. She laid her wet cheek against his hand. “Please!”
“Now look here, young lady,” he told her, flattering himself that he had achieved a remarkable dignity, and looking more awkward than John Sheldon had ever looked before; “I’ll compromise with you. You say you know where he is? All right. Sit down and we’ll eat, you and I. You will then show me the way, and we’ll go and find him and bring him back here. I haven’t hurt you, have I? I won’t hurt him. No,” as her lips shaped to another “please,” “I’m not going to let you go alone. We go together—or we stay right here. Which is it?”
Paula frowned. Then she wiped away the tears. Whether some deep feminine instinct had told her that they had almost served their purpose but were useless now will, perhaps, never be known. She went across the room to a rude cupboard, and brought from it a blackened pot containing a meat stew. Sheldon was hungry enough to dispense with the stew being warmed up. Merely to make conversation to divert her thoughts from her father’s danger, he said carelessly:
“You must have trouble getting your meat? You can’t have much ammunition.” He tasted the stew, and found it, although salt was noticeably wanted, savory and palatable. “What sort of meat is it?” he asked.
“Snakes!” said Paula.