“Oh, that would be _great_!” cried Henry admiringly, craning his neck around his father to listen. “What’s a regicide?” Henry was three grades behind Helen in school and hadn’t begun on history. His father and sister explained to him, both talking at once. And then they laughed to hear their words clashing together. They swung along rapidly, talking, laughing, interrupting each other, Henry constantly asking questions, the other two developing the imaginary scene, thrilling at the imaginary danger, loading imaginary muskets, their voices chiming out like bells in the cold evening air. Once in a while, Henry, who was small for his age, gave a little animated hop and skip to keep up with the others. In front of the delicatessen-grocery store at the corner of their street, the father suddenly drew them to a halt. “What was it Mother asked me to bring home with me?” He spoke anxiously, and anxiously the children looked up at him. Suppose he should not be able to remember it! But he did. It was a package of oatmeal and a yeast-cake. He dragged them triumphantly up from his memory. They entered the shop and found Aunt Mattie Farnham there, buying ginger cookies and potato salad and boiled ham. “My! I’m ashamed to have you Knapps catch me at this!” she protested with that Aunt Mattieish laugh of hers that meant that she wasn’t really ashamed, or anything but cheerfully ready to make fun of herself. “It’s not Evangeline Knapp who’d be buying delicatessen stuff for her family’s supper at six o’clock at night! We went out in the new Buick this afternoon.... Oh, Lester, she’s a dream, simply a _dream_! And we went further than we meant. You always do, you know. And of course, being me, there’s not a thing in the house to eat. I put Frank and the children to setting the table while I tore over here. Don’t you tell Evangeline on me, Lester. I tried to get her to go and take Stephen, but she wouldn’t--had biscuits to make for supper and a floor to scrub or something. She _never_ lets things go, as I do. She’s a perfect wonder, Evangeline is, anyhow. An example to us all, I always tell ’em. After I’ve been in your house, I declare, I’m ashamed to set foot in my own!” While the grocer wrapped up her purchases she stooped her fair smiling face towards Helen to say, “My gracious, honey, how swell we do look in our new coat! Where did Momma buy that for you?” Helen looked down at it as if to see what coat it was, as if she had forgotten that she wore a coat. Then she said, “She made it, Mother made it, out of an old coat Gramma Houghton sent us. The collar and cuffs are off Cousin Celia’s last-winter one.”