everybody except Milla had other things to do.

Having sneezed involuntarily, he added a spell of coughing for which
there was no necessity. "I guess I must be wrong," he muttered thickly.

"What about, Ramsey?"

"About it bein' a squirrel." With infinite timidity he turned his head
and encountered a gaze so soft, so hallowed, that it disconcerted him,
and he dropped a "drumstick" of fried chicken, well dotted with ants,
from his plate. Scarlet he picked it up, but did not eat it. For the
first time in his life he felt that eating fried chicken held in the
fingers was not to be thought of. He replaced the "drumstick" upon his
plate and allowed it to remain there untouched, in spite of a great
hunger for it.

Having looked down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed
steadily at his plate, and into this limited circle of vision came
Milla's delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift. "There," she said in
a motherly little voice. "It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and I made
it myself. I want you to eat it, Ramsey."

His own fingers approached tremulousness as he accepted the thick
sandwich from her and conveyed it to his mouth. A moment later his soul
filled with horror, for a spurt of mayonnaise dressing had caused a
catastrophe the scene of which occupied no inconsiderable area of his
right cheek; which was the cheek toward Milla. He groped wretchedly for
his handkerchief but could not find it; he had lost it. Sudden death
would have been relief; he was sure that after such grotesquerie Milla
could never bear to have anything more to do with him; he was ruined.