"Don't jiggle the plate. And _don't drop_ it!" Craftily, his eye on the shifting level of the gravy, his feet feeling for the uneven places of the ground, Jimmie made his perilous journey, with the combined manner of a sleep walker and of a priest of some terrible temple of sacrifice, from the stove to the table. Then, when Augusta had followed with other things, they sat down on little camp stools close together. A sudden timid, half-fearful reverence and diffidence came over them, as of a perfect moment that could not be held nor ever fully repeated. A fleeting, intangible joy in each other caught them, joy in their very aloneness, in their oneness of thought and heart and soul. And they knew, almost fearfully, that such moments are rare in even the very happiest of all lives. A little tear glistened in the sunlight on Augusta's lashes. But Jimmie knew better than to let the moment fade out trying to prolong it. Better break it while the beauty of it was yet in the glow. "I am dying, Egypt, dying, for the half of that steak! Is it any concern of yours, Madam, that your husband has had no food for the last four and twenty hours?" "You've had six egg's and three quarts of milk, and you fought--" "Food! I said. Didn't I, Donahue? I repeat, I've had nothing to eat since this time last night. And I am ravening. If you don't cut, I shall tear!" "Hold the table steady, then." They ate with happy hunger, laughing at the untried makeshifts with which they tried to bridge over the distance between sacred table manners and the bird-in-hand necessities of the rickety little board, spatting a little now and then as each insisted on giving the other the choicest bits of the food. Once Jimmie spilled over the salt in a moment of forgetfulness, and he watched curiously as he saw Augusta furtively pick up a tiny pinch of it and pretend to look at it and then, just naturally, throw it over her shoulder. Strangely enough, he had nothing to say on the matter. This little girl woman of his made him think a great deal. Augusta had brought him home that other morning, out of the park, and sent him to bed. Then she had gone rapidly and ruthlessly to work as though she had been planning just what she was to do. She saw the boarders of the house at breakfast and told them that she must close the house at once. Some of them had been friends and it pained her to give them any inconvenience. But she told them just why she was forced to do what she was doing. And, before she had finished, there was not one of them who would not have agreed to move his or her trunk out to the sidewalk on the instant, if it would help her. Then she went to renting agents. And before another day she had sublet the house for the remainder of the term of her mother's lease.