But the horror of the dream gripped her when she found herself alone in the kitchen; and she remembered she had not told the children not to go into the room where their father was sleeping. She went back and found that Jimmy had not left his post on the side of the bed, where he still regretted that his perfectly well toe did not entitle him to gastronomic consideration. Topeka, who had arrived at an age where little girls, in the first subconscious attempt at adornment, know no keener delight than plastering their heads with a wet hairbrush, till they present an appearance of slippery rotundity equalled only by a peeled onion, put down the brush with guilty haste at sight of her mother.
“I’m goin’ to dress him soon as I’ve done my hair.”
“Any one think you was goin’ to be married, the time you’ve took to it.”
“It’s gettin’ so long,” urged Topeka.
“I wouldn’t give it a chance to grow no longer while Jimmy was waitin’ to get dressed. And don’t go into the front room. Your father’s gettin’ his sleep out.”
Topeka opened her round eyes. There was always something suspicious about that sleep her father had to get out, but she felt it was something she must not ask questions about. Her mother lingered; she dreaded to be alone in the kitchen. The little, familiar intimacies between herself and her children scattered the horrors of the dream which would come back to her when she was again at the mercy of her thoughts.
“Judy, s’pose you dress Jimmy this morning! I want Topeka to help me get breakfast.”
“Yessum,” said Judith, dutifully. “Is he to have his face washed?”
“He certainly is, Judy. I’s ashamed to have you ask such a question. ’Ain’t you all been brought up to have your faces washed?”
But young Judith seemed disinclined to take up this phase of family superiority. She merely inquired further: