"Bully!" she cried. "We'll give her a surprise." Then she turned to Jamie. "Surprise is when folks do things that other folks don't guess you're going to, dear," she explained, to his utter confusion. Scipio went to the larder and gathered various scraps of food, and plates, and anything that seemed to him as being of any possible use in a meal. He re-kindled the fire in the cookstove and made some coffee. That he understood. There was no sign of his despair about him now. Perhaps he was more than usually silent, but otherwise, for the time at least, he had buried his trouble sufficiently deeply out of sight, so that at any rate the inquiring eyes of the happy children could see nothing of it. They, too, busied themselves in the preparation. Vada dictated to her father with never flagging tongue, and Jamie carried everything he could lift to and fro, regardless of whether he was bringing or taking away. Vada chid him in her childishly superior way, but her efforts were quite lost on his delicious self-importance. Nor could there be any doubt that, in his infantile mind, he was quite assured that his services were indispensable. At last the meal was ready. There was nearly everything of which the household consisted upon the table or in close proximity to it. Then, when at last they sat down, and Scipio glanced over the strange conglomeration, his conscience was smitten. "Seems to me you kiddies need bread and milk," he said ruefully. "But I don't guess there's any milk." Vada promptly threw herself into the breach. "On'y Jamie has bread an' milk, pop-pa. Y'see his new teeth ain't through. Mine is. You best cut his up into wee bits." "Sure, of course," agreed Scipio in relief. "I'll get along down to Minky's for milk after," he added, while he obediently proceeded to cut up the boy's meat. It was a strange meal. There was something even tragic in it. The children were wildly happy in the thought that they had shared in this wonderful surprise for their mother. That they had assisted in those things which childhood ever yearns to share in--the domestic doings of their elders. The man ate mechanically. His body told him to eat, and so he ate without knowing or caring what. His distraught mind was traveling swiftly through the barren paths of hopelessness and despair, while yet he had to keep his children in countenance under their fire of childish prattle. Many times he could have flung aside his mask and given up, but the babyish laughter held him to an effort such as he had never before been called upon to make. When the meal was finished Scipio was about to get up from his chair, but Vada's imperious tongue stayed him. "We ain't said grace," she declared complainingly. And the man promptly dropped back into his seat. "Sure," he agreed helplessly. At once the girl put her finger-tips together before her nose and closed her eyes. "Thank God for my good dinner, Amen, and may we help fix up after?" she rattled off.