"Ayah, I sure am, all right," she said. "Godfrey Mighty, he's got me
doing it now--sticking a 'all right' on the end of everything. Sure,
I'm going out with him again, you little stinkpot. If he's got all that
dough, he might's well spend some of it on me. Just so Hellwig don't
find out about it, damn it all."
"Grandma, please," I said. "You shouldn't swear over the phone. The
operator might not like it."
"I didn't swear!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I just said, 'I hope
Hellwig don't find out, darn it.'"
"That reminds me," I said, "How would you like it if I'd invite Hellwig
up here for a weekend some time? I've been meaning to do it ever since
we came here. He must get lonesome all alone there in his apartment."
"Ayah, he don't have brains enough to get married so's he wouldn't be
alone," she interrupted. "You mean, you'd ask him to come sometime when
it's my weekend to come there too?" she added doubtfully. "Plague take
it all, just so they ain't no old man in one of your cabins that takes
a shine to me--that'd make Hellwig pretty mad."
"Oh, don't worry about that. He can have a cabin all to himself,
too--he won't have to pay anything for it, of course--and during the
day you and he could walk around, maybe even get as far as the bottom
of the mountains and start climbing them."
"Well, I guess he'd like that pretty well," she conceded.
David and Donna had always been normal, well-adjusted children, but my
busyness with the motel, taking care of customers and the endless
inevitable details connected with the business, led to a few minor
behavior problems. The baby, soon after she learned to feed herself
efficiently, went on a hunger strike. If a psychiatrist were to have
one meal with us I am sure he would have it figured out that her sudden
refusal to eat was her unconscious way of protesting against the fact
that either Grant or I got up to answer the doorbell three or four
times during every meal. I could see her point; sometimes I myself,
after going on one of these little jaunts to rent cabins or to describe
the service and the bill of fare of Moe's restaurant, for the benefit
of doubting souls who weren't quite sure whether they should eat there
or drive on downtown for a meal, felt like tossing my cooled food into
the garbage can.
Anyway, Grant finally figured out a way to get Little Chief
Hair-in-the-Face started eating again. Before each meal he captured a
small black ant (either outdoors or on the sink, depending on the
efficacy of our current ant poison) and imprisoned it on the tray of
her high chair beneath her plate--a transparent glass plate, purchased
especially for the experiment. Then, after allowing her one fascinated
glimpse of the little creature, he filled her plate with food.
The first time that happened. Donna ate frantically, to get the food
out of the way so that she could see the ant. After that, I expected
the game to pall, but it never has. Since the first week or two Grant
hasn't often put an ant under her plate, but she invariably cleans her
plate, wipes off any remaining food particles with a piece of bread,
and peers carefully through the glass. After all, she is obviously
thinking, there might really be an ant this time! She has never tried,
since the first day we played the game, to lift the plate and look
under it. The first day, though, she was prepared to whisk the plate
out of the way so that she could see what was going on under it. I
brushed the forever-straggling brown hair out of her eyes and told her
she must eat the food all gone--then she could see the ant.
She made one last, hopeful attempt to remove the plate. "Nope," I said
sternly, "that wouldn't be cricket."