Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/58

 hear them calling: "Laddie's going home!" "Dotty's got to go!" "Good-by, kids!" "Good-by-ee!" All so happy, and yet she heard a sadness through the joyous voices.

"Mother!"

"Hello, Jodiekins! Down, Shep! Down, old fellow! Mercy! Jodie Green! What a dirty little boy! What have you been doing to get yourself so hot, darling?"

Feeling his weight against her, his silky head touching her cheek, she was hardly strong enough to bear her love for him.

"Now wash yourself nicely before you go out to Lizzie."

Jodie liked having supper in the warm clean kitchen, at one end of the table covered with a red cloth woven with white roses and wheat and a snowfall of dots. Lizzie had put sprigs of flowering wild currant, smelling like hot gingerbread, in a jelly glass of water on the shelf by the alarm clock. The kettle puffed out steam, the bubbling saucepan kept tipping its shining hat. Jodie was a big boy now, and had a napkin instead of a bib. Lizzie tied it in two rabbit's ears, and it made hammocks under his chin to catch blobs of mush or apple sauce. He told Lizzie all his news, between spoonfuls, and listened to hers, his blue eyes round, a milk mustache on his upper lip.

Out-of-doors, Miss Smith's white lilacs were foamy in the dusk, and Kate could hardly see to paint any