For the recent talk about expenses had
chilled his imagination too much for an instantaneous story, whereas
rhymes came ever to him easily.
'All right! Let's have it anyhow,' came the verdict in sentences of
French and English. And in the breathless pause that followed, even
Mother looking up expectantly from her busy fingers, was heard this
strange fate of the Thin Child who stole another's bread-crumb:--
He then grew thinner than the thin,
The thin end of the wedge;
He grew so pitifully thin
It set his teeth on edge;
But the edge it set his teeth upon
Was worse than getting thinner,
For it was the edge of appetite,
And his teeth were in no dinner!
There was a deep silence. Mother looked as though she expected more,--
the good part yet to come. The rhyme fell flat as a pancake, for of
course the children did not understand it. Its nonsense, clever
enough, escaped them. True nonsense is for grown-ups only. Jane Anne
stared steadily at him with a puzzled frown. Her face wore an
expression like a moth.
'Thank you, Daddy, _very_ much,' she said, certain as ever that the
fault if any was her own, since all that Daddy said and did was simply
splendid. Whereupon the others fairly screamed with delight, turning
attention thereby from the dismal failure.
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