“I’m goin’ to dress him soon as I’ve done my hair.”

“Any one think you was goin’ to be married, the time you’ve took to it.”

“It’s gettin’ so long,” urged Topeka.

“I wouldn’t give it a chance to grow no longer while Jimmy was waitin’ to get dressed.  And don’t go into the front room.  Your father’s gettin’ his sleep out.”

Topeka opened her round eyes.  There was always something suspicious about that sleep her father had to get out, but she felt it was something she must not ask questions about.  Her mother lingered; she dreaded to be alone in the kitchen.  The little, familiar intimacies between herself and her children scattered the horrors of the dream which would come back to her when she was again at the mercy of her thoughts.

“Judy, s’pose you dress Jimmy this morning!  I want Topeka to help me get breakfast.”

“Yessum,” said Judith, dutifully.  “Is he to have his face washed?”

“He certainly is, Judy.  I’s ashamed to have you ask such a question.  ’Ain’t you all been brought up to have your faces washed?”

But young Judith seemed disinclined to take up this phase of family superiority.  She merely inquired further: 

“Is he to have it washed with soap, maw?”

“He shore is.  Any one would think you had been born and raised in Arizony or Nebrasky, to hear you talk.  I’m plumb ashamed of you, Judy.”

“But, ’deed, maw, I ain’t big enough to wash his face with soap.  It takes Topeka to hold his head.”

The subject of the discussion still sat on the edge of the bed, a small lord of creation, letting his women folk arrange among themselves who should minister to his wants.  As an instrument of torture the washcloth, in the hands of his sister Judy, was no ignoble rival of the cactus thorn.  The question of making terms for his sufferings again appealed to him in the light of a feasible business proposition.

“Muvvy, tan’t I have the apple?  Judy hurts me a lot when she wathes my face wis soap.”

“Yes, you can have the apple, honey; and, Judy, you be gentle with him.  Don’t rub his features up, and be careful and don’t get soap in his eyes.”

“No’m.”  And Judy heroically stifled the longing to slick her hair, like Topeka’s, with the wet hairbrush.  There were easier tasks than washing the face of her younger brother.

When Topeka and her mother were alone in the kitchen, Topeka grinding the coffee and all unconsciously working her jaw in an accompaniment to the coffee-mill, her mother bent over her and said: 

“Did you dream of anything last night?”

Topeka simultaneously stopped working the coffee-mill and her jaw, and regarded her mother solemnly.  She did not remember having been thus questioned about her dreams before.

“No’m,” she answered, after laborious consideration.  But something in her mother’s face held her.

“You’re sure you didn’t dream nothing?”