"Your children manage to use the most repulsive words," she reproved.
"You can call chicken scraps by any name you want to," came back Tom's voice, "but I say Jamie's cart is not to be used for it."
"It ain't fair!" cried Robert. "We have a nice, clean granite kettle that's washed every day. Chickens don't eat garbage—pigs eat it. And our arms get so tired carrying the things so far. You carry it and you'd see!"
A discussion of the shrillest arose. Sara's pathos over the long road and the hot sun soon became Gaelic in its quality; there was something in her wail which had in it the sorrow from which folk-songs are made.
In the turmoil Jamie alone remained calm. Technicalities as to whether what one fed to chickens was or was not garbage affected him not at all. He kept singing:
"It's my cart! You can't take my cart! It's my cart! You don't take my cart!"
Soon a cry arose from the older children:
"Why haven't we got a cart? If Jamie has a cart why can't we have a cart?"
To this Tom replied: "Jamie has to have something! You children are not going to use Jamie's cart." Then in sing-song came Jamie's little response:
"No, they can't have my cart! They can't have my cart!"
It seemed impossible that only four of them—one father and three children—came surging into the library, they having for the moment constituted Alice the Throne of Justice. In a tone which reminded her only too much of her eldest son, Tom Marcey burst out on his wife:
"Your children,"—and by this he meant, of course,
