as for responsibility for this State of Things! Well, that was the fault of Alice and the food. And what Tom Marcey wanted was the State of Things altered, and that right away.
"If you think it is a pleasant thing," he went on, "to see Sara eat one grain of rice like Amina with an expression of endurance upon her face, if you think it pleases me to see Robert, at his age—at his age—gnawing chops like a prehistoric cave man"
Here Alice showed spirit. She said, "Well, then, why don't you change it? Why don't you make them eat the way they ought to eat?"
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I will! You bet I will! What do we talk about at table?" he demanded, coming back to his first manner, "but what the children are eating or not eating? Have we any other topic of conversation? Do we ever, when we are alone, speak of anything else except what they do or do not eat, and how bad their table manners are? I don't believe that there's another household like this in the whole United States."
So saying, he went away hastily.
Silence brooded over the desolated Marcey dinner table, a silence that Sara finally broke.
"I know why Papa's so mad," she chirped; "I know what Papa wouldn't stand, Robert Marcey. It's because you eat chop bones, yes, and chicken bones, too, when he isn't looking, with your fingers."
To this Robert replied with gloom.
"Yes, and what do you eat yours with—your toes?"
This struck Sara funny. Amid gurglings and chirpings, she said:
"Mother, could one eat bones with one's toes, if one tried?"
Robert made a shrug toward his mother, a shrug which
