“Patsey, avick, wobble yer tooth now man alive.  Don’t be havin’ that loose thing hangin’ in yer jaw, and Pearlie comin’ home so soon.”

The younger children, whose appetites were out of all proportion to the supply, were often “tided over” what might have been a tearful time by a promise of the good time coming.  When Danny cried because the bottom of his porridge plate was “always stickin’ through,” and later in the same day came home in the same unmanned condition because he had smelled chickens cooking down at the hotel when he and Jimmy went with the milk, Mary rose to the occasion and told him in a wild flight of unwarranted extravagance that they would have a turkey when Pearl came home.  ’N cranberry sauce.  ’N brown gravy.  No-ow!

The house had undergone some preparations for the joyous event.  Everything was scrubbed that could be scrubbed.  An elaborately scalloped newspaper drape ornamented the clock shelf; paper chains, made of blue and yellow sale-bills, were festooned from the elbow of the stove pipes to the window curtains; the wood box was freshly papered with newspaper; red flannel was put in the lamps.

The children were scrubbed until they shone.  Bugsey’s sweater had a hole in the “chist,” but you would never know it the way he held his hand.  Tommy’s stocking had a hole in the knee, but he had artfully inserted a piece of black lining that by careful watching kept up appearances.

Mrs. Watson, instigated by Danny, had looked at the turkeys in the butcher shop that morning, asked the price and came away sorrowful.  Even Danny understood that a turkey was not to be thought of.  They compromised on a pot-roast because it makes so much gravy, and with this and the prospect of potatoes and turnips and prune-pie, the family had to be content.

On the day that Pearlie was expected home, Mrs. Watson and Mary were busy preparing the evening meal, although it was still quite early in the afternoon.  Wee Danny stood on a syrup keg in front of the window, determined to be the first to see Pearlie.

Mrs. Watson was peeling the potatoes and singing.  Mrs. Watson sang because her heart was glad, for was not Pearlie coming home.  She never allowed her singing to interfere with more urgent duties; the singing could always wait, and she never forgot just where she had left it, but would come back and pick up at the exact place she had discarded it.

“Sure ain’t it great the way ma never drops a stitch in her singin’,” her eldest son Teddy had said admiringly one day.  “She can lave a note half turned up in the air, and go off and lave it, and ye’d think she’d forgot where she left it, but never a fear o’ ma, two days afther she’ll rache up for it and bring it down and slip off into the choon agin, nate as nate.”

On this particular day Mrs. Watson sang because she couldn’t help it, for Pearlie was coming home—­

   From Greenland’s icy mountains,
   From India’s coral strands,