'People who waste bread,' he began, 'end by getting so thin themselves
that they double up like paper and disappear.'
'But _how_ thin, Daddy?' asked Jane Anne, ever literal to the death.
'And is it romantic or just silly?'
He was puzzled for a moment what to reply.
'He doesn't know. He's making up,' piped Jimbo.
'I _do_ know,' came the belated explanation, as he put the crumb into
the bowl of his extinguished pipe with a solemnity that delighted
them, but puzzled Jane Anne, who suggested it would taste 'like toast
smelt.' 'People who take bread that doesn't belong to them end by
having no dinner---'
'But that isn't anything about thinness,' interrupted Jinny, still
uncomforted. Some one wasted by love was in her mind perhaps.
'It is, child, because they get so frightfully thin,' he went on,
'that they end by getting thinner than the thin end of a wedge.'
The eyes of Mother twinkled, but the children still stared, waiting.
They had never heard of this phrase about the wedge. Indeed Jane Anne
shared with Jimbo total ignorance of the word at all. Like the
audience who read his books, or rather ought to have read them, they
expected something different, yet still hoped.
'It's a rhyme, and not a story though,' he added, anticipating perhaps
their possible disappointment.
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