“This curiosity, on the part of the fowls, must have changed to amazement when they beheld the attack made on the wagon and the strange things in the way of eating that followed.
“How Bill and Katy Kelly did eat and how they reveled! And little Willy Kaatenstein literally waded in gum-drops and long licorice pipes. They began the feast with pie; from pie they went at figs; from figs they transferred to the tough little animals; and from that to cookies; and from cookies to long licorice pipes. Then they stopped eating consecutively and went at the entire feast hap-hazard.
“They ate fast and furiously for several minutes.
“Then the first ardor of the feast subsided, and little Willy Kaatenstein, for one, seemed to lose all interest not only in feasts but in the world at large. He sat back upon a box, which contained a duck sitting on twelve eggs, and looked at the ground with the air of one who has someway lost his perspective.
“Bill and Katy Kelly still ate, but more, it seemed, from a sense of duty to themselves than from appetite, and presently their eating became desultory, and they began to throw remnants of the feast to the fowls. These at first gazed askance at the extraordinary food thus lavished upon them—but finally went at it madly, as if they, too, reveled in feasts.
“Mrs. Kaatenstein’s face must need have been a study could she have seen her cherished ducks and geese stuffing their crops with licorice pipes and gum-drops.
“But Mrs. Kaatenstein was out for the afternoon.
“While these things were happening in her duck-yard, no less interesting ones were taking place up-stairs in her bed-room, where Harry Kaatenstein and Leah Kaatenstein and Jenny Kaatenstein were prisoners of Emma.
“At first they merely sat on the window-seat and discussed the several untoward things that they wished would happen to Emma. Having hanged, drawn and quartered that liberal-proportioned lady until they could no more, they felt better. Then they looked over their mother’s room in search of amusement, with the result that the black-walnut bureau, containing the toys with which they were not allowed to play, was made to give forth the wealth of its treasures. The floor of Mrs. Kaatenstein’s bed-room presented a motley appearance. Jenny Kaatenstein even forgot to miss her bit of unleavened bread in her excitement over the fact that she actually was holding her own huge wax doll in her lap. And the circus and the steam-engine and the tinkling piano and the tea-sets and the barking dogs and the picture books and the manifold other things were at last put to those uses for which they had been destined. And they even went to the jewel-case and got out their watches.
“But Harry Kaatenstein and Leah Kaatenstein and Jenny Kaatenstein, though they were pleasantly excited, were yet highly uneasy in their minds. They knew they had yet to render up payment for the day’s business.——