"Now I’ve the money ackchelly in my pocket, I’ll tell Ma an’ the childern," she said to Sam, who was washing his hands at the sink, preparatory to sitting down to his midday meal. "I wonder if Ma’ll kick?" he pondered solemnly. "Nothin’ like tryin’, an’ findin’ out," Martha returned, "dishing up," with energy, as one after the other of her hungry brood appeared, responding to her resounding call of "Dinner!" "Say, Cora, doncher attempt to come to the table with that shaggy-lookin’ head on you. Go smooth your hair back proper, like you always wear it. I don’t mind most things, but to set down to eat alongside somethin’ looks like a sky-tearer dog, _I will not_! Sammy, take your hands outa your pockets, like a little gen’lman, an’ help Sabina tie her napkin on an’ get into her high chair. Sabina, you leave your brother tie your napkin on, when he offers to do it! I’m busy. Say, Francie, when I told you trim the lamp this mornin’, I didn’t mean cut the wick in _scollops_. Lucky I happened to see it, or we’d ’a’ been smoked out o’ house an’ home. Now, Ma, if you’re ready, we’ll sit." Ma being ready, they sat, and the meal progressed, notwithstanding the fact that Cora, reappearing, shorn of her modish coiffure, was in no mood for merry-making. "I hate my hair this way!" she announced for the benefit of whom it might concern. "Ringlets is one thing, _stringlets_ is another," said Martha, unreproachfully. "At least, _now_ you don’t look like somebody’d been woolin’ the head of you. Have some stew?" "No, I hate the very name o’ stew." "Call it rag-goo, then, same’s Miss Claire’s grand chef-cook does. Have some, anyhow, for luck. Here, cheer up, Cora! When I was a kid, I was one o’ nine childern, an’ you can take it from me, we wasn’t thinkin’ half so much, in them days, what we’d eat as _where we’d get it_. When I was twelve—two years younger than you—I went to live out scullery-maid with Mrs. Underwood, God bless her! where my mother’d been cook before me. From that day, I never went hungry no more, nor the ones at home either. But I don’t like to see my childern turn up their noses at good food. It ain’t becomin’. Now, eat your rag-goo like a lady, an’ we’ll call it square. Say, Ma, you know what Sam an’ me’s goin’ to do?" Ma shook her head, after the fashion of a mild bovine chewing the meditative cud. "We’re goin’ to play hookey. We’re goin’ to fly the coop, for a couple o’ days, an’ go back home, to New York. Sam’s gotta—on business, an’ I’m goin’ ta, on pleasure." The moment following Martha’s announcement was one of intense silence. The children and Ma were too amazed to speak. The idea of _Mother_ deserting, even for a few days, was hardly conceivable. Then, as the monstrousness of it began to percolate, there rose a chorus of protest. "O—oh, mother-r! What’ll we do?" "I wanta go too!" "No, take _me_, mother!" Cora’s voice, at last, dominated the rest.