"Well, I thought he was!" Mrs. Cox made a pilgrimage to the parlour door, and returned confident. "He'll go out!" she said reassuringly.
"Comp'ny coming?" Julia asked smilingly. The other girls giggled and looked at each other.
"Well, why couldn't Grandpa sit in the kitchen?" the girl asked. "There's a better light out here!"
"Catch him doing anything decent," Evelyn said, and Marguerite added: "And, Ju, he'll sit there sometimes just to be mean, and he'll take his shoes off, and put his socks up——"
"And nights he knows we want the parlour he'll stay in on purpose," Evelyn supplemented eagerly.
"I wouldn't stand for it," Julia asserted.
"Pa's awfully cranky," Mrs. Cox said resignedly. "He's always been that way! You cook him corn beef—that's the night he wanted pork chops; sometimes he'll snap your head off if you speak, and others he'll ask you why you sit around like a mute and don't talk. Sometimes, if you ask him for money, he'll put his hand in his pocket real willing, and other times for weeks he won't give you a cent!"
"I wouldn't put up with it," said Julia again. "What does he do with his money?"
"Oh, he treats the boys, and sometimes, when he's drunk, they'll borrow it off him," said his wife. "Pa's always open-handed with the boys!"
Evelyn, who had washed her coarse, handsome face at the kitchen sink, began now to arrange her hair with a small comb that had been wedged into the sinkboard. Marguerite, having completed similar operations, offered to walk with Julia to the Mission Street car.