“Why in the name of sense can’t he come to his dinner?”

Napoleon gave a gulping swallow to clear his tongue.  “Dunno,” he managed to articulate, and then went off into a violent paroxysm of choking and coughing.

“Why don’t you turn your head?” cried the mother, seizing the said member between her two hands and giving it an energetic twist that dislocated a bone or snapped a tendon, one might have surmised from the sharp crick-crack which accompanied the movement.  “What in the name of decency makes you pack your mouth in that manner?  Are you famished?”

“A’most,” answered the recovered Napoleon, resettling himself, face to the table, and resuming the shoveling of mashed potato into his mouth.

“That’s a pretty story, after all the breakfast you ate, and the lunch you had not two hours ago!  Where under the sun, moon and stars do you put it all?”

“Mouth,” responded Napoleon, describing with his strong teeth a semicircle in his slice of brown bread.

“Tell me what can be keeping your father,” said Mrs. Lively, returning to her subject.

“Can’t.”

“He’ll come poking along in the course of time, I suppose, when all the hot things are cold, and all the cold things are hot.  Just like him.  And I worked myself into a fever to get them on the table piping hot and ice-cold.  From stove to cellar, from cellar to well, I rushed, but if I’d worked myself to death’s door, he’d stay his stay out, all the same.”

“Reason for stayin’, I s’pose,” suggested Napoleon.

“Yes, of course you’ll take his part—­you always do.  For pity’s sake, what has your mother ever done that you should side against her?”

“Dunno.”

“Dunno!  Of course you don’t.  I’ll tell you:  She tended you through all your helpless infancy:  she nursed you through teething, and whooping-cough, and measles, and scarlet fever, and chicken-pox, and mercy knows what else.  Many’s the time she watched with you the livelong night, when your father was snoring and dreaming in the farthest corner of the house, so he mightn’t hear your wailing and moaning.  She’s toiled and slaved for you like a plantation negro, while he—­”

“He’s comin’,” interrupted Napoleon, without for a moment intermitting his potato-shoveling.  “Walkin’ fast,” continued the sententious lad, swallowing immediately half a cup of milk.

Dr. Lively came hurrying into the dining-room.

“For pity’s sake, I think it’s about time,” the wife began pettishly.

“Have you seen my purse anywhere about here?” the gentleman asked with an anxious cadence in his voice.

“Your purse!” shrieked Mrs. Lively, turning short upon her husband and glaring in wild alarm.

“Lost it?” asked Napoleon, digging his fork into a huge potato and transferring it to his plate.

“Go, look in the bed-room, Nappy:  I think I must have dropped it there,” said the father.