said, "You see, I told you, she's defective. Her mind isn't what it ought to be."
During this scene Jamie had not been idle. He had ignored his plate of wholesome food, and he had had time to make an entire meal of nuts and raisins, set, apparently, out of his reach. By what prestidigitation he had come by them, Alice could not find out. The point was that he irrevocably had them. He now contributed, with a smile of angelic sweetness:
"I love raisins and nuts!"
Rage broke out in Robert's heart. "Look at him! Look at him!" he cried. "He's eaten every one of them! He's eaten every one! And you said if we ate our food properly, an' all of it—and all of it—we could have seven nuts and seven raisins apiece!"
Sara screamed: "Look at him, Mother! He didn't eat anything before Father left, an' he didn't eat a thing after Father left, and now he's eaten every single nut and every single raisin except some eenty-weenty ones. He's a bad boy!"
To which Jamie replied, simply, "I'm finished."
He slipped down from his chair and left the table.
Here they all acted as though the meal were finished, but Alice was made of sterner stuff.
"No child shall leave this table," she proclaimed, "until he has eaten all the meat and the macaroni upon his plate."
Sara the practical inquired, "And do we get our nuts and raisins just the same?"
"Where from, you idiot?" gloomed Robert.
"Where the others came from," Sara returned, as one who spoke of a land flowing with nuts and raisins.
For once her mother agreed with her. "Certainly, where the others came from," she said. "You shall have them."
