Florence undertook the translation. “He’s saying the kitty died.”
“Oh, ain’t that too bad! Poor kitty! What was the matter with her?”
“I don’t know. She just died,” said Florence indifferently. “We’re having a funeral with her.”
“You are? Well, I declare! And I s’pose Mommer’s singing that lovely hymn for you.”
They eyed her in the wary fashion of children suspicious of the false interest of grown-ups. “No, she isn’t. She’s just singing.” Tom said curtly. “I don’t b’lieve she knows about the kitty even.”
Here the auburn-haired twin precipitately entered the conversation with the information that the bird died, too. “It was a canary. It sang and sang, and then it stopped singing and died.”
“Oh, my, you musta felt bad!”
“Ho, that ain’t anything!” said the blue-eyed twin in a superior manner. “We’ve had lots of things die. Just lots!” He launched into large statements. “Everything we get dies! We had some white mice and they died, and we had a dog and it died, and we had——”
“Aw, shut up, we didn’t any such thing!”
“We did so! Don’t we, Flo, have everything die? Don’t we, Reddy?”