e?" Mr. Deacon persuaded, spoon dripping;

The child Monona made her lips thin and straight and shook her head
until her straight hair flapped in her eyes on either side. Mr. Deacon's
eyes anxiously consulted his wife's eyes. What is this? Their progeny
will not eat? What can be supplied?

"Some bread and milk!" cried Mrs. Deacon brightly, exploding on "bread."
One wondered how she thought of it.

"No," said Monona, inflection up, chin the same. She was affecting
indifference to, this scene, in which her soul delighted. She twisted
her head, bit her lips unconcernedly, and turned her eyes to the remote.

There emerged from the fringe of things, where she perpetually hovered,
Mrs. Deacon's older sister, Lulu Bett, who was "making her home with
us." And that was precisely the case. _They_ were not making her a
home, goodness knows. Lulu was the family beast of burden.

"Can't I make her a little milk toast?" she asked Mrs. Deacon.

Mrs. Deacon hesitated, not with compunction at accepting Lulu's offer,
not diplomatically to lure Monona. But she hesitated habitually, by
nature, as another is by nature vivacious or brunette.

"Yes!" shouted the child Monona.

The tension relaxed. Mrs. Deacon assented. Lulu went to the kitchen. Mr.
Deacon served on. Something of this scene was enacted every day. For
Monona the drama never lost its zest. It never occurred to the others to
let her sit without eating, once, as a cure-all. The Deacons were
devoted parents and the child Monona was delicate. She had a white,
grave face, white hair, white eyebrows, white lashes. She was sullen,
anaemic. They let her wear rings. She "toed in." The poor child was the
late birth of a late marriage and the principal joy which she had
provided them thus far was the pleased reflection that they had produced
her at all.

"Where's your mother, Ina?" Mr. Deacon inquired. "Isn't she coming to
her supper?"

"Tantrim," said Mrs. Deacon, softly.

"Oh, ho," said he, and said no more.

The temper of Mrs. Bett, who also lived with them, had days of high
vibration when she absented herself from the table as a kind of
self-indulgence, and no one could persuade her to food. "Tantrims," they
called these occasions.

"Baked potatoes," said Mr. Deacon. "That's good--that's good. The baked
potato contains more nourishment than potatoes prepared in any other
way. The nourishment is next to the skin. Roasting retains it."

"That's what I always think," said