"Supper!" exploded his mother. "Surely you are not looking for anything more to eat to-day. You yourself declared only a little while ago that you couldn't eat another morsel."
"It wasn't a little while ago; it was hours," Tim affirmed. "We've been to walk since then and I'm hungry."
"Hungry! Did you ever hear the likes! Hungry! And the bairn swallowing down turkey until I expected every second he would have apoplexy!"
"I'm hungry, too," rejoined Carl with shame-faced candor.
"So am I!" piped Martin.
"Well, I never saw your match!" cried their mother, holding up her hands. "One would think you were cobras, anacondas, or something else out of the zoo. Still, I don't see as I can let you starve. If you're hungry there's the pantry with its shelves groaning aloud with food. Run in and help yourselves."
Her family needed no second bidding. Above everything else they loved a meal where all superfluous accessories such as knives, forks, and napkins were done away with, and where there was no one at one's elbow to caution or demand the time-worn "pleases" and "thank you's." To forage in the pantry unrestrained was like being let loose in the vales of Arcadia. One after another they emerged, bearing in their hands the spoils most attracting their fancy.
"You're not going to devour that whole cross section of squash pie, are you, Tim?" asked Mary, aghast.
"Sure I am," retorted the unabashed Timothy. "That is, unless you want part of it."
"Of course I don't. But I should think you'd die!"