Part 23 (1/2)

”Don't bleeve him, mammy. He 'ain't ever cried. He'd a cried, for sure, if his toe was sore.” At the age of five, little Judith, namesake of her aunt, was something of a doubting Thomas.

”Let mammy see, Jimmy,” and Alida bent over her son and heir.

”Doth Dimmy det any apple?” The wee man sometimes succeeded in making terms with his mother, when the other children were not present. Though feeling himself a trifle over-confident, he held the disputed toe with the air of one keeping back a trump card, and looked his mother squarely in the eyes.

She struggled with the temptation to give him the apple. He had lifted the horrors of her dream as nothing else could have done, but she answered him with quiet firmness.

”Jimmy must not tell stories.”

”Less see,” insisted Topeka.

”He da.s.sent,” affirmed Judith, junior, of little faith.

”It hurths me,” and Jimmy tried to squeeze out a tear. ”It hurths me, my tore toe!”

His mother tipped him over on his fat little back and opened the chubby hand that held the trump toe. It was white from the pressure applied by the infant dissembler, but there was no trace of the treacherous cactus thorn. She gave him an affectionate spank and went into the kitchen to make coffee.

”I with I had a tore toe,” he crooned, quite unabashed at the discovery of his deception. ”I with I toud det a tore toe 'thout the hurt.”

But the horror of the dream gripped her when she found herself alone in the kitchen; and she remembered she had not told the children not to go into the room where their father was sleeping. She went back and found that Jimmy had not left his post on the side of the bed, where he still regretted that his perfectly well toe did not ent.i.tle him to gastronomic consideration. Topeka, who had arrived at an age where little girls, in the first subconscious attempt at adornment, know no keener delight than plastering their heads with a wet hairbrush, till they present an appearance of slippery rotundity equalled only by a peeled onion, put down the brush with guilty haste at sight of her mother.

”I'm goin' to dress him soon as I've done my hair.”

”Any one think you was goin' to be married, the time you've took to it.”

”It's gettin' so long,” urged Topeka.

”I wouldn't give it a chance to grow no longer while Jimmy was waitin' to get dressed. And don't go into the front room. Your father's gettin' his sleep out.”

Topeka opened her round eyes. There was always something suspicious about that sleep her father had to get out, but she felt it was something she must not ask questions about. Her mother lingered; she dreaded to be alone in the kitchen. The little, familiar intimacies between herself and her children scattered the horrors of the dream which would come back to her when she was again at the mercy of her thoughts.

”Judy, s'pose you dress Jimmy this morning! I want Topeka to help me get breakfast.”

”Yessum,” said Judith, dutifully. ”Is he to have his face washed?”

”He certainly is, Judy. I's ashamed to have you ask such a question.

'Ain't you all been brought up to have your faces washed?”

But young Judith seemed disinclined to take up this phase of family superiority. She merely inquired further:

”Is he to have it washed with soap, maw?”

”He sh.o.r.e is. Any one would think you had been born and raised in Arizony or Nebrasky, to hear you talk. I'm plumb ashamed of you, Judy.”

”But, 'deed, maw, I ain't big enough to wash his face with soap. It takes Topeka to hold his head.”

The subject of the discussion still sat on the edge of the bed, a small lord of creation, letting his women folk arrange among themselves who should minister to his wants. As an instrument of torture the washcloth, in the hands of his sister Judy, was no ign.o.ble rival of the cactus thorn.

The question of making terms for his sufferings again appealed to him in the light of a feasible business proposition.

”Muvvy, tan't I have the apple? Judy hurts me a lot when she wathes my face wis soap.”