When the meal was finished Scipio was about to get up from his chair, but Vada’s imperious tongue stayed him.
“We ain’t said grace,” she declared complainingly.
And the man promptly dropped back into his seat.
“Sure,” he agreed helplessly.
At once the girl put her finger-tips together before her nose and closed her eyes.
“Thank God for my good dinner, Amen, and may we help fix up after?” she rattled off.
“Ess,” added Jamie, “tank Dod for my dood dinner, Amen, me fix up, too.”
And with this last word both children tumbled almost headlong from the bench which they were sharing. Nor had their diminutive parent the heart to deny their request.
The next hour was perhaps one of the hardest in Scipio’s life. Nothing could have impressed his hopeless position upon him more than the enthusiastic assistance so cordially afforded him. While the children had no understanding of their father’s grief, while with every heart-beat they glowed with a loving desire to be his help, their every act was an unconscious stab which drove him until he could have cried aloud in agony.
And it was a period of catastrophe. Little Vada scalded her hand and had to be petted back to her normal condition of sunny smiles. Jamie broke one of the few plates, and his tears had to be banished by assurances that it did not matter, and that he had done his father a kindness by ridding him of such an ugly plate. Then Vada stumbled into the garbage pail and had to be carefully wiped, while Jamie smeared his sparse hair with rancid dripping and insisted he was “Injun,” vociferously proclaiming his desire to “talp” his sister.