Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/115

 Home again at early twilight, we ate of a cold supper set out for us by Mrs. Sullivan. And here I reflected that good days often end badly, for my namesake betrayed extreme dissatisfaction with the food.

"Why don't we have that pudding oftener—with lather on top of it?" was his first outbreak. And at last he felt obliged to declare bitterly, "We don't have a thing that's fit to eat!"

"Calvin," said his father, "if I have to whip, it will hurt you worse than it does me."

Whereupon the complainer was wisely silent, but later I heard him asserting, between catches of his breath, and out of his father's hearing:—

"I don't care—(a sniff)—when I'm rich, I'll go to Budd's for an up-to-date dinner, you bet—(a snuffle)—I'll probably go there every day of my life—(two snuffles)—yes, sir—Sundays and all!"

I cheered him as best I could.

His sister had saved her day to a happy end, babbling off to bed with the distressing Irene, to whom she would show a book of pictures until sleep shut off her little world.

A wise old man—I believe he was a bishop—once said he knew "that outside the real world is a world of fine fabling."

I had stolen a day from that world. Now I hurried through the gloom of the hall, past the poor striving hands, to sit with Solon Denney and tell him of a peculiar thing I had observed during the afternoon's walk.