seemed to gather
strength. And somehow even his straw-colored hair, so scanty,
ill-grown and disheveled, looked less like the stubble it so much
resembled. It was almost as though a latent, unsuspected strength
were rousing within him, lifting him from the slough of despair by
which he was so nearly submerged. It was as though the presence of
his twins had drawn from him an acknowledgment of his duty, a sense
which was so strongly and incongruously developed in his otherwise
uncertain character, and demanded of him a sacrifice of all personal
inclination. They were her children. Yes, and they were his. Her
children--her children. And she was gone. They had no one to look
to, no one to care for them now, but--him.

He sprang to his feet.

"Why, yes, kiddies," he said, with a painful assumption of lightness.
"You're needing food sure. Say, I guess we won't wait for your momma.
We'll just hand her an elegant surprise. We'll get dinner ourselves."

Jamie gurgled his joyous approval, but Vada was more intelligible.

"Bully!" she cried. "We'll give her a surprise." Then she turned to
Jamie. "Surprise is when folks do things that other folks don't guess
you're going to, dear," she explained, to his utter confusion.

Scipio went to the larder and gathered various scraps of food, and
plates, and anything that seemed to him as being of any possible use
in a meal. He re-kindled the fire in the cookstove and made some
coffee. That he understood. There was no sign of his despair about him
now. Perhaps he was more than usually silent, but otherwise, for the
time at least, he had buried his trouble sufficiently deeply out of
sight, so that at any rate the inquiring eyes of the happy children
could see nothing of it.

They, too, busied themselves in the preparation. Vada dictated to her
father with never flagging tongue, and Jamie carried everything he
could lift to and fro, regardless of whether he was bringing or taking
away. Vada chid him in her childishly superior way, but her efforts
were quite lost on his delicious self-importance. Nor could there be
any doubt that, in his infantile mind, he was quite assured that his
services were indispensable.

At last the meal was ready. There was nearly everything of which the
household consisted upon the table or in close proximity to it. Then,
when at last they sat down, and Scipio glanced over the strange
conglomeration, his conscience was smitten.

"Seems to me you kiddies nee