The first son nodded, but kept his eyes fixed anxiously on the Old Woman. She was glaring at a girl ascending the ladder. "Look sharp where you put those things, now," she was saying. "I'll be inside in a minute, and if you haven't put them away properly I'll know the reason why!"

Everychild felt that he was fully justified in saying (to the first son) "She seems to be pretty bad, doesn't she!"

The first son fairly jumped. "Not so loud!" he whispered. "She might hear you."

The Old Woman really had heard. She stared at her first son in a terrible manner. "So you've come, have you?" she exclaimed. "And I suppose you'll tell me you've been working hard all day?"

"Yes, mother," replied the first son, "We've carried more f.a.gots than you ever saw. Such fine f.a.gots! Didn't we?" He turned to the second son to have his report verified.

"You wouldn't believe how many fine f.a.gots we carried," declared the second son.

The other sons began to appear one by one, now that the first shock of battle was over. They all stared up at the Old Woman as if they were prepared to run if she so much as sneezed.

"Well, you know what's coming to you now," said the Old Woman. "Come on, all of you!"

They all began to make wry faces. "If we could only have some bread with it, mother!" pleaded the first son.

"You'll take what's offered you!" exclaimed the Old Woman grimly.

"And if you wouldn't whip us to-night, mother--anyway, not so soundly,"

said the second son.

To this the Old Woman retorted: "Who does the whipping around here, I'd like to know? Come here this instant!"

It seemed that there was to be a brief respite, however; for the Old Woman turned to the steaming pot and began testing its contents with great seriousness, lifting the ladle to her lips again and again, and looking abstractedly far away into the forest.

In the meantime more of the children gathered around Everychild. A few of the girls now joined their brothers. They looked at Everychild with unconcealed admiration.

"What do you suppose she is going to do to you?" asked Everychild of the group about him.

The first son replied to this: "I should think you'd know. Haven't you been told how she whips us something terrible?"

Everychild inquired in amazement: "All of you?"

The first daughter now spoke. "All of us," she said. "Every last one of us. That's just before she puts us to bed, you know."

"Of course--I remember now," said Everychild. "She 'whips you all soundly.'"

"That's no word for it," declared the first son. "You know she's had an awful lot of experience all these years. And there's so many of us."

He concluded this sentence in so meek a manner that Everychild exclaimed indignantly, "I think it ought to be stopped. If I were you . . . did you ever try hiding her whip?"

The first daughter replied hopelessly, "We couldn't do that. Her whip . . . it's the kind of whip that grows, you understand."

"Some sort of limb?"

"You might call it that. But it's her own limb."

"Yes, if she got it first."

"She did. It's her hand."

"Do you mean," demanded Everychild, "that she whips all of you with her hand?"

"And does a thorough job, too," said the first daughter.

Everychild a.s.sumed a very grave air. "How often does this happen?" he asked.

"Every night," he was a.s.sured.

He made a very wry face. "But such things . . ." He couldn't think of the right word at first. Then he asked, "But isn't it all very--very vulgar?"

The first daughter sighed. "I suppose so," she admitted. "But when there are so many children you can't help being a little vulgar."

The first son put in here: "And you mustn't think too hard of mother.

You can imagine her position: so many of us, and the high cost of living, and all. Sometimes I think she whips us just to get our minds off our stomachs. You know, a supper of broth without any bread--and that's just what it is--is about as bad as nothing at all. But if you've been whipped soundly you forget about being hungry. You think about running away, or something like that. And the next thing you know it's morning."

Everychild still felt very uncomfortable. "But how does she manage about breakfast?" he asked.

"Oh, she has to feed us well in the morning--to keep us from starving,"

explained the first son.

Everychild nodded as if the matter had been made perfectly clear. And then the Old Woman cried out quite alarmingly, "Are you coming, or shall I have to fetch you?"

Several of the children replied to this: "We're coming!" Nevertheless they did not go immediately. The first daughter would not go without saying to Everychild, "Of course we ought to invite you to have supper with us--but you see it isn't quite like a regular supper." She blushed painfully.

Everychild rea.s.sured her immediately. "Don't think of it," he said.

The second son also had something else to say. "I suppose there aren't so many of you at your house?" he asked.

"So many children?" replied Everychild. "No. Not any, now. I was the only child."

This had the effect of exciting all the sons and daughters. The second son voiced the amazement which they all felt. "You don't say so!" he exclaimed. "But how did you ever get anything to wear? If there was no one ahead of you, how could they make anything over for you?"

Everychild really did not understand this. "Why, my mother used to get things for me," he said.

"Your mother, certainly," said the second son. "But who wore your clothes before you got them?"

"No one, I suppose. You mean that your clothes . . . ?"

"They're made over from the things the older children have grown too big for."

Everychild was more and more puzzled. "Yes," he said, "but the oldest one of all--there had to be a beginning!"

The second son laughed. "In the beginning," he explained, "they have to be cut down from father's things."

"Oh--your father's!" exclaimed Everychild. Then in a polite murmur, "I--I never heard of your father."