HE coast is clear,'” read Grandfather Bixby drowsily. “Send two trusty scouts to the cave”
“Grandpa,” said the little boy on the bed suddenly, “what did you have for dinner?”
“'and roll the casks of provisions beyond the reach of the waves. A brushwood fire was soon burning, and from it proceeded an appetizing odor of broiling fish. The castaways'”
“Grandpa!” The boy's tone was more insistent. “What did you have for dinner?”
Grandfather Bixby was wide awake now.
“Dinner!” he exclaimed, as if he heard for the first time. He was thinking hard. “Why, nothing much, Dicky. Meat and potatoes—I forget what else.”
“It smelled like chocolate pudding,” said Dicky wistfully. “And when Norah came up to sit with me while you were at dinner, she said it was chocolate pudding.”
“Norah's a fool!” snapped Grandfather Bixby, putting down his glasses irritably. “There may have been pudding, but it wasn't good pudding, I can tell you that.”
“It doesn't have to be very good for me to like it. Grandpa, were you ever sick on the Fourth of July?”
“Never was well,” maintained the old gentleman stoutly. “Seems to me, when I look back, I 'most always had the mumps or the measles or something. I was a regular Fourth of July croaker.”
Dicky eyed his grandfather suspiciously, but the wrinkled face above the gray dressing gown was entirely serious. Indeed, Grandfather Bixby, embarking on a sea of mendacity, felt to the full the inexpertness resulting from seventy years of honesty. To cover his confusion, he rearranged with care the huge American flag that had been draped over the foot of the sick bed, and stepped back to inspect the result.
“I tell you, it's fine, Dicky!” he said. “What with that string of firecrackers across the foot of the bed, and the flag, and a Roman candle at every corner, you look like a regiment going into action.”
“Like a battleship,” the child supplemented gleefully. 'Like father's ship. You're the admiral, and I'm the captain. Last Fourth of July, father took me to the park, and a rocket stick came down—biff!—and made a hole in his hat and cut his head a little. Do you remember? And how mother was so scared—for him, you know—that she cried? Grandpa, when is my father coming back?”
Grandfather Bixby busied himself at the window, without answering. When the child repeated the question, however, he turned around as if he had just heard.
“Your father?” he repeated, to gain time. “Why, he'll be back some time, Dicky. You settle down, now. Your mother won't let me look after you again, if you don't keep quiet.”
“But Norah says he won't be back,” Dicky persisted. “She said I had lost the best father in the world. My feet got all cold, and I said, 'Was he killed in a battle?' and she said, 'No, he isn't dead; and such a fine-looking young man, too!'”
He stopped, out of breath; and, fortunately for the old man's twitching face, his attention was at that moment distracted. Grandfather Bixby had taken a covered jelly glass from a tin pail of ice on the window sill, and was holding it up for the youngster's eyes to feast on.
“Ice cream!” he exclaimed, looking around over his glasses for a spoon. “A present from the drug-store man at the corner. He said he missed his best customer.” He pulled a chair beside the bed and slipped a pillow under Dicky's head. “I reckon your mother and the doctor wouldn't object to a little ice cream.”
The first spoonful, guided by his shaking old hand, missed the boy's open mouth and slid into the hollow of his neck, to be mopped up by Grandfather Bixby's pipe-scented handkerchief. The next half dozen reached their proper destination in short order. Then Dicky turned away his head.
“I can't chew it,” he explained, in a thin, but polite, voice. “When I shut my teeth, it isn't there. If father was here, he would make that old doctor give me something to eat. Everybody does what father says—but mother. She's allowed to do what she likes.”
The old man scraped down the cream from the sides of the glass, and his corded fingers were tremulous.
“I guess that's it, Dicky boy,” he said. “Your mother's always been allowed to do what she likes, and that isn't good for anybody. Not that it has spoiled her,” he supplemented, with hasty loyalty.
The white china clock with the blue windmills on it ticked away cheerfully on the mantel; beside it stood a small locomotive, a wooden mule, and a life-like cow, with a space in her back that lifted out and allowed milk to be poured in, to be milked out later into diminutive pails. And in a silver frame, surmounted by a blue paper rose which Dicky had made at kindergarten, was the picture of a young man in uniform.