'Now you're full-dress,' she said, falling instantly so close against him that he could not tickle her, while Mother glanced up a second uncertain whether to criticise the impertinence or let it pass. She let it pass. None of the children had the faintest idea what it meant to be afraid of their father. 'People who waste bread,' he began, 'end by getting so thin themselves that they double up like paper and disappear.' 'But _how_ thin, Daddy?' asked Jane Anne, ever literal to the death. 'And is it romantic or just silly?' He was puzzled for a moment what to reply. 'He doesn't know. He's making up,' piped Jimbo. 'I _do_ know,' came the belated explanation, as he put the crumb into the bowl of his extinguished pipe with a solemnity that delighted them, but puzzled Jane Anne, who suggested it would taste 'like toast smelt.' 'People who take bread that doesn't belong to them end by having no dinner---' 'But that isn't anything about thinness,' interrupted Jinny, still uncomforted. Some one wasted by love was in her mind perhaps. 'It is, child, because they get so frightfully thin,' he went on, 'that they end by getting thinner than the thin end of a wedge.' The eyes of Mother twinkled, but the children still stared, waiting. They had never heard of this phrase about the wedge. Indeed Jane Anne shared with Jimbo total ignorance of the word at all. Like the audience who read his books, or rather ought to have read them, they expected something different, yet still hoped. 'It's a rhyme, and not a story though,' he added, anticipating perhaps their possible disappointment. For the recent talk about expenses had chilled his imagination too much for an instantaneous story, whereas rhymes came ever to him easily. 'All right! Let's have it anyhow,' came the verdict in sentences of French and English. And in the breathless pause that followed, even Mother looking up expectantly from her busy fingers, was heard this strange fate of the Thin Child who stole another's bread-crumb:-- He then grew thinner than the thin, The thin end of the wedge; He grew so pitifully thin It set his teeth on edge; But the edge it set his teeth upon Was worse than getting thinner, For it was the edge of appetite, And his teeth were in no dinner! There was a deep silence. Mother looked as though she expected more,-- the good part yet to come. The rhyme fell flat as a pancake, for of course the children did not understand it. Its nonsense, clever enough, escaped them. True nonsense is for grown-ups only. Jane Anne stared steadily at him with a puzzled frown. Her face wore an expression like a moth. 'Thank you, Daddy, _very_ much,' she said, certain as ever that the fault if any was her own, since all that Daddy said and did was simply splendid. Whereupon the others fairly screamed with delight, turning attention thereby from the dismal failure. 'She doesn't understand it, but she's always so polite!' cried Monkey.