Having arranged everything to her satisfaction, she began to dish up generous helpings of chicken and potato. The food had an appetizing odor and looked well cooked, but save for a pot of tea, there was nothing else.
“We’re having quite a banquet tonight,” Pop Breen remarked appreciatively. “I’ll take a drumstick, Ma, if there ain’t no one else wantin’ it.”
“You’ll take what you get,” his wife retorted, slapping the drumstick onto Penny’s plate.
Louise and Penny made a pretense of eating, finding the food much better than they had expected. Neither Ted nor Rhoda seemed hungry, and Mrs. Breen immediately called attention to their lack of appetite.
“Why, Ted! What’s the matter you’re not eating? Are you sick?”
The boy shook his head and got to his feet.
“I’m not hungry, Mom,” he mumbled. “Excuse me, please. I have a date with a fellow at Riverview, and I have to hurry.”
Before Mrs. Breen could detain him, he left the trailer.
“I can’t understand that boy any more,” she observed with a sad shake of her head. “He hasn’t been himself lately.”
The younger members of the Breen family quite made up for Ted and Rhoda’s lack of appetite. Time and again they came to the table to have their plates refilled, until all that remained of the chicken was a few bones.