After leaving the store with a sack of provisions over his shoulder he grumbled his way across the dumps to Scipio's house. He cursed the weight he was forced to carry, and anathematized the man who had driven him to so bestir himself. He lamented over this waste of his precious energies, he consigned Scipio and his children to eternity, and metaphorically hurled Jessie headlong to the depths of the uttermost abyss of the nether-world. But he went on. In spite of his foulest language and vilest epithets, it was his full intention to do his best for the children. What he found on entering Scipio's hut set his small eyes twinkling again. His unclean face creased up into a grin, and, softly tiptoeing to a far corner of the room, he deposited his sack with the greatest care. Then he stood up, and his eyes fixed themselves on a curious heap under the table. It was a tumbled pile of pale blue, dirty white, with a four-legged dash of yellow. And out of the heap he made the forms of two small sleeping children, each hugging in their arms an extremity of a yellow cur pup, also sound asleep, in the shaft of sunlight which flooded in through the open doorway. Sunny rubbed his eyes and thought hard, nor did he find the process irksome. From the miserable camp pup he glanced at the grubby face of Jamie. Then his eyes passed on to Vada's pretty but equally dirty features. And swift action at once followed his thought. He glanced at the dying fire in the cookstove, and saw the small clothes hanging on the chair in front of it. He felt them; they were quite dry. Then he tried the kettle on the stove; it still had water in it. Then he went to the fuel-box; yes, there was fuel. Now with his fingers he replenished the fire, and noiselessly re-filled the kettle. Then he removed the clothes and put the chair aside. The children still slept on. He further investigated the resources of Scipio's _menage_. He found a wash-bowl and soap and a towel, three things he rarely sought for any purposes of his own. Then, after looking into the cupboard, he shook his head. It was deplorably bare of all but uncleanliness. And it was the former that caused his headshake, not the latter. With some pride he re-stocked the shelves with the liberal purchases he had made at Bill's expense. He had provided everything that a man's mind could conceive as being necessary for the interior of healthy childhood. True, he had made no provision for a yellow pup.