I settled it by filling our plates and carrying them into the living room. Grant's and David's plates I set on each arm of the davenport. I put my own plate on an arm of the overstuffed chair. The salt, pepper, bread and butter were in the middle of the living room floor.
"Are you still glad we sold our tables?" I asked Grant, when we had started eating.
He's always willing to put up with a little inconvenience if there's profit in it.
"Yep," he said. "If we hadn't quick sold them the first day, it might have turned out that no one would want them at all, and we'd have to come way down in the price. Please pass the bread."
"Just the same," I said, getting down on my hands and knees to get him a piece of bread, "I'm going to add twenty dollars to what we planned on asking for the living room set. If anyone wants it tomorrow they're going to have to really pay for it!"
"You split your infilitive, Mama," David said.
There's one thing that must be said for David. Maybe he does usually sound more like a herd of elephants than like one small, agreeable little boy, and maybe he does create a very reasonable facsimile of chaos when he gets hold of a piece of gum--but he recognizes a split infinitive when he hears it. My friends all think he's an infant prodigy--in that one respect, anyway. But sometimes I wish I'd never taught him anything about grammar. I didn't know what a split infinitive was until I was in high school, and I got along just as well without knowing. I never made Grandma want to swing me by the heels and smack my head against a wall, either.
"I'm very sorry I split an infinitive," I told David. "I'll try to be more careful in the future. But just the same," I went on, turning back to Grant, "whoever buys that living room set is going to really pay for it!"
"Fine," Grant said, getting up and going into the kitchen; "the more money we can raise, the better." He came back carrying a jar of horseradish; he sat down and put some horseradish on his plate, and proceeded to mix it thoroughly with his peas.
One of the strangest things about Grant, hardly compatible with the efficiency and practicality of his nature, is his passion for weird combinations of food. I have learned to look the other way while he improves upon what I have prepared; if I were to watch while he mixes and eats his little gastronomical horrors, I doubt if I'd be able to do much eating myself.