When he came into the kitchen, Grandma was standing with a broom across the door. "Praises be, ye're safe!" she exclaimed. "I been holdin' these young'uns at bay. They wanted to follow ye."
"Grandpa! Has the colt come?" Maureen and Paul asked in one breath.
"Nope. And if I'm any judge, 'tain't soon. Now everybody to bed. Things is all right. We got to think that."
"Paul and I, we can't go to bed yet," Maureen protested.
"And why can't ye?"
"We haven't done our homework."
"Clarence," Grandma said, "you're all tuckered out, and you can't call Tom Reed 'cause our telephone's dead as a doorknob. So you go on to bed. I'll listen to the homework so's no more members of this household tippytoe out behind my back."
Grandpa patted everyone good night and went off, loosening his suspenders as he went.
"I feel like Abraham Lincoln studying by candlelight," Maureen said, bringing her pile of books close to the lantern.
"Wish you looked more like him," Paul teased, "instead of like a wild horse with a mane that's never been brushed."