“No cockroaches and no smell of fried fish here, like there is on Avenue B,” said Father. “And we don’t have to go home from our picnic. I wonder why folks let themselves get all old and house-bound, when they could be like us?”
“Yes,” said Mother, drowsily.
He hadn’t nerved himself to play the mouth-organ, not all day, but now, with the luxury of fire and solitude, he played it, and, what’s more, he tried to whistle a natty little ballad which touchingly presented a castaway as “long-long-longing for his Michigan, his wish-again ho-o-ome.”
Yet Father wasn’t altogether satisfied with his fire. The dry twigs he kept feeding to it flared up and were gone. The Innocents huddled together, closer and closer to the coals. Father gave little pats to her shoulder while she shivered and began to look anxious.
“Cold, old honey?”
“Yes, but it don’t matter,” she declared.
“Come on, I guess we’d better go look for a place to sleep. I’m afraid—don’t know as I could keep this fire up all night, after all.”
“Oh, I can’t walk any. Oh, I guess it will be all right when I get going again.” She tried to smile at him, and with the slowness of pain she reached for her bundle.
He snatched it from her. “I can carry all our stuff, anyway,” he said.
Leaning on him, moving step by step, every step an agony of soreness and cold, lifting her feet each time by a separate effort of her numbed will, she plodded beside him, while he tried to aid her with a hand under her elbow.