the savor of the forthcoming
supper.

"Abbie dear, have you heard the news?"

Abbie gasped, "Oh God, is anything happened to Jake--killed or
arrested or anything?"

"No, no--but _Clara_--the _Clara_--"

"Clara who?"

"The ship, the first ship we built, she's destroyed."

"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 circumstance 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 accumulation. He wa