r. 'I'm as hungry as Wobinson
Crusoe, an' I'm goin' to tell mar how you're loiterin'.'

She followed him sadly. She had forgotten to say her own.

'Fifteen minutes late,' said Mrs Harding severely, as she entered the
kitchen. 'You'll hev to be extry spry to make up. There's pertaters to
be fried, an' the children's lunches to put up, an' John Alexander's
lost his jography--I believe that boy'd lose his head if it twarn't
glued to his shoulders. There's a button off Stephen's collar, an' Susan
Ann wants her hair curled, an' Polly's frettin' to be taken up. It beats
me how that child does fret--I believe I'll put her to sleep with you
after this--I'm that beat out I can hardly stand.'

'Here, Leander, go and call your father, or you'll be late for school
again, an' your teacher'll be sending in more complaints. 'Bout all them
teachers is good for anyway--settin' like ladies twiddling at the leaves
of a book, an' thinkin' themselves somethin' fine because they know a
few words of Latin, an' can figure with an _x_. Algebry is all very fine
in its way, but I guess plain arithmetic is good enough for most folks.
It's all I was brought up on, an' the multiplication table has kept me
on a level with the majority.'

Pauline smiled to herself, as she cut generous slices of pumpkin pie to
go with the doughnuts and bread and butter in the different dinner
pails. That was just what tired her; being 'on a level with the
majority.'

The long morning wore itself away. Pauline toiled bravely over the
endless array of pinafores which the youthful Hardings managed to make
unpresentable in a week.

'Monotony even in gingham!' she murmured; for Polly's were all of pink
check, Lemuel's blue, and Leander's a dull brown.

'Saves sortin',' had been the brief response, when she had suggested
varying the colours in order to cultivate the aesthetic instinct in the
wearers.

'But, Mrs Harding,' she remonstrated, 'they say now that it is possible
for even wall-paper to lower the moral tone of a child, and lead to
crime----'

Her step-mother turned on her a look of withering scorn.

'If your hifalutin' people mean to say that if I don't get papering to
suit their notions, I will make my boys thieves an' liars, then it's
well for us the walls is covered with sensible green paint that'll wash.
To-morrow is killing time, an' next week we must try out the tallow. You
can be as aesthetic as you're a mind to with the head-cheese and
candles.'