"For the land's sake! I want to know! Well, what you know about that!"

Abbie could not rise to very lofty heights of emotion or language over anything impersonal. She made hardly so much noise over this tragedy as a hen does over the delivery of an egg.

Mamise was distressed by her stolidity. She understood with regret why Jake did not find Abbie an ideal inspirational companion. She hated to think well of Jake or ill of her sister, but one cannot help receiving impressions.

She did her best to stimulate Abbie to a decent warmth, but Abbie was as immune to such appeals as those people were who were still wondering why America went to war with Germany.

Abbie was entirely perfunctory in her responses to Mamise's pictures of the atrocity. She grew really indignant when she looked at the clock and saw that Jake was late to dinner. She broke in on Mamise's excitement with a distressful:

"And we got steak 'n' cab'ge for supper."

"I must hurry back to my own shack," said Mamise, rising.

"You stay right where you are. You're goin' to eat with us."

"Not to-night, thanks, dear."

She kept no servant of her own. She enjoyed the circ.u.mstance of getting her meals. She was camping out in her shanty. To-night she wanted to be busy about something especially about a kitchen--the machine-shop of the woman who wants to be puttering at something.

She was dismally lonely, but she was not equal to a supper at Jake's.

She would have liked a few children of her own, but she was glad that she did not own the Nuddle children, especially the elder two.

The Nuddles had given three hostages to Fortune. Jake cared little whether Fortune kept the hostages or not, or whether or not she treated them as the Germans treated Belgian hostages.

Little Sister was the oldest of the trio completed by Little Brother and a middle-sized bear named Sam. Sis and Sam were juvenile anarchists born with those gifts of mischief, envy, indolence, and denunciation that Jake and the literary press-agents of the same spirit flattered as philosophy or even as philanthropy. Little Brother was a quiet, patient gnome with quaint instincts of industry and acc.u.mulation. He was always at work at something. His mud-pie bakery was famous for two blocks. He gathered bright pebbles and sh.e.l.ls. In the marble season he was a plutocrat in taws and agates.

Being always busy, he always had time to do more things. He even volunteered to help his mother. When he got an occasional penny he h.o.a.rded it in hiding. He had need to, for Sam borrowed what he could and stole what he could not wheedle.

Little Brother was not stingy, but he saved; he bought his mother petty gifts once in a while when he had enough to pay for something.

Little Sister and Sam were capable in emotional crises of sympathy or hatred to express themselves volubly. Little Brother had no gifts of speech. He made gifts of pebbles or of money awkwardly, shyly, with few words. Mamise, as she tried to extricate herself from Abbie's la.s.soing hospitality, paused in the door and studied the children, contrasting them with the Webling grandchildren who had been born with gold spoons in their mouths and somebody to take them out, fill them, and put them in again. But luxury seemed to make small difference in character.

She mused upon the three strange beings that had come into the world as a result of the chance union of Jake and Abbie. Without that they would never have existed and the world would have never known the difference, nor would they.

Sis and Sam were quarreling vigorously. Little Brother was silent upon the hearth. He had collected from the gutter many small stones and sticks. They were treasures to him and he was as important about them as a miser about his shekels. Again and again he counted them, taking a pleasure in their arithmetic. Already he was advanced in mathematics beyond the others and he loved to arrange his wealth for the sheer delight of arrangement; orderliness was an instinct with him already.

For a time Mamise noted how solemnly he kept at work, building a little stone house and painfully making it stand. He was a home-builder already.

Sam had paid no heed to the work. But, wondering what Mamise was looking at, he turned and saw his brother. A grin stretched his mouth. Little Brother grew anxious. He knew that when something he had builded interested Sam its doom was close.

"Wha.s.s 'at?" said Sam.

"None yer business," said Little Brother, as s.p.u.n.ky as Belgium before the Kaiser.

"'S'ouse, ain't it?"

"You lea' me 'lone, now!"

"Where d'you git it at?"

"I built it."

"Gimme't!"

"You build you one for your own self now."

"'At one's good enough for me."

"Maw! You make Sam lea' my youse alone."

Mrs. Nuddle moaned: "Sammie, don't bother Little Brother now. You go on about your own business."

Smash! splash! Sam had kicked the house into ruins with the side of his foot.

Mamise was so angry that before she knew it she had darted at him and smacked him with violence. Instantly she was ashamed of herself. Sam began to rub his face and yowl:

"Maw, she gimme a swipe in the snoot! She hurt me, so she did."

Mamise was disgusted. Abbie appeared at the door equally disgusted; it was intolerable that any one should slap her children but herself. She had accepted too much of Mamise's money to be very indignant, but she did rise to a wail:

"Seems to me, Mamise, you might keep your hands off my childern."

"I'm sorry. I forgot myself. But Sam is so like his father I just couldn't help taking a whack at him. The little bully knocked over his brother's house just to hear it fall. When he grows up he'll be just as much of a nuisance as Jake and he'll call it syndicalism or internationalism or something, just as Jake does."

Jake came in on the scene. He brought home his black eye and a white story.

When Abbie gasped, "What on earth's the matter?" he growled: "I b.u.mped into a girder. Whatya s'pose?"

Abbie accepted the eye as a fact and the story as a fiction, but she knew that, however Jake stood in the yard, as a pugilist he was the home champion.

She called Little Sister to bring from the ice-box a slice of the steak she had bought for dinner. On the high wages Jake was earning--or at least receiving--the family was eating high.

Little Sister told her brother Sam, "It's a shame to waste good meat on his old black lamp." And Sam's regret was, "I wisht I'd 'a' gave it to um."

Little Sister knew better than to let her father hear any of this, but it was only another cruel evidence that great lovers of the public welfare are apt to be harshly regarded at home. It is too much to expect that one who tenderly considers mankind in the ma.s.s should have time to be kind to them in particular.

Jake was not even appreciated by Mamise, whom he did appreciate. Every time he praised her looks or her swell clothes she acted as if he made her mad.

To-night when he found her at the house her first gush of anxiety for him was followed by a remark of singular heartlessness:

"But, oh, did you hear of the destruction of the _Clara_?"

"Yes, I heard of the destruction of the _Clara_," he echoed, with a sneer. "If I had my way the whole rotten fleet would follow her to the bottom of the ocean!"

"Why, Jake!" was Abbie's best.

Jake went on: "And it will, too, or I'm a liar. The Germans will get them boats as fast as they build 'em." He laughed. "I tell you them Kaiser-boys just eats ships."

"But how were they able to destroy the _Clara_?" Mamise demanded.